No softening needed here. If your hands have got harder to use and you are deciding what to spend money on, this is the order we would do it in — and most of it is not ours.
Every product and every shop named on this page is somebody else's. There are no affiliate links, no commission, no paid placements and no arrangement of any kind — we are not paid a penny if you buy any of it. It is listed because it is the honest answer to the problem, and a recommendation that pays the recommender is worth less than one that does not.
On this page
The order to buy in
- Write down the three most annoying moments of your day. Not the hardest — the most annoying. Those are what you will actually use something for.
- Name the movement, not the task. Twisting, pinching, lifting, pressing and gripping fail separately, and the aid that fixes one does nothing for another. A jar opener is no use if the problem is the weight of the jar.
- Try the free change first. A corner of the worktop instead of the middle. A lighter bottle. Warming your hands. A surprising number of problems dissolve for nothing.
- Buy one thing. Live with it a fortnight.
- Then the next.
Get the free things first
- Ask the pharmacist for easy-open lids on your prescriptions. Free, immediate, and most people do not know to ask.
- Ask your council for a needs assessment. You do not need a GP referral in England. An occupational therapist looks at your actual kitchen, and equipment recommended afterwards is frequently provided at no cost. How to ask.
- Ring a helpline. Arthritis UK and NRAS both have free ones staffed by people who know this properly.
- If nothing on the market fits, ask REMAP. Volunteers build one-off equipment for individuals free of charge, across around 65 UK branches.
- Compare on Living Made Easy rather than on a shop. Impartial, run by the Disabled Living Foundation, and it lists everybody.
What is worth the money
Roughly in order of how often people say they were glad they bought it.
- Elastic laces. A couple of pounds, and the shoes stop being a decision.
- A rubber grip mat. Jars, plates, bottles, anything that slides.
- A key turner. Removes a small daily fight you have probably stopped noticing.
- Fat-handled kitchen tools. Sold as kitchenware, not as aids. Peta (UK)'s Easi-Grip range is angled rather than straight and made in Britain; Etac's boards hold food so one hand does the work of two.
- A kettle tipper or a one-cup boiler. The kettle is the thing people most often say they had stopped filling properly.
- A foaming soap dispenser. About two pounds, and it needs far less force than a lotion pump. Why it works.
- Our clip-on pump adapter, £9.99, if the pump is the problem and you want to keep the bottle you have. The honest comparison against the alternatives is on its own page, including the two cases where somebody else's product is the better buy.
Things that are a treat, and happen to be easier
There is no rule that says everything you buy has to be equipment.
- Heated gloves, if cold is what takes your hands away. Genuinely lovely, and they work.
- A very good, very light mug. Weight matters more than shape once the hand is tired.
- A tablet stand. Reading stops being a grip problem.
- A stylus for touchscreens, if fingertips are sore — though a knuckle is free and works, because the screen responds to skin rather than pressure.
- Pre-chopped vegetables. Not a gadget, not a defeat, and it buys back the part of cooking that hurts.
And one thing that is not for sale: it is worth telling somebody. A GP, a pharmacist, an OT. Adapting around a difficulty and having it looked at are not alternatives, and it is easy to spend a year doing only the first.
Where to get proper help, most of it free
Nothing on this website is a substitute for any of the following, and all of it is better than a website.
- A pharmacist. No appointment, no referral, and they will talk to you about hand pain and about what is worth trying. The most under-used free advice in the country.
- Your GP. Particularly if the difficulty is new, getting worse, worse in the morning, or in both hands at once.
- An occupational therapist. This is the profession whose actual job is the problem this page is about — they look at your hands and your kitchen, not at a category page. In England you can ask your council for a needs assessment for equipment and adaptations, and much of what they recommend is provided at no cost. Ask your GP, or your council's adult social care team directly.
- Arthritis UK — the charity that was Versus Arthritis until its 2026 rebrand — and NRAS both run free helplines staffed by people who know this subject properly.
- Living Made Easy, run by the Disabled Living Foundation, is an impartial database of daily-living equipment. It lists products from everyone, including our competitors and including things that would replace PALM entirely. If you want to compare options without being sold to, start there.
PALM is a daily-living aid, not a medical device. It makes a soap pump easier to press. It does not treat, prevent or improve any condition, and nothing here is medical advice or a diagnosis. If your hands hurt, the people in the list above are the ones to ask.