The Gadget Rosalind Wishes She Had in the School Kitchen

I spent twenty-nine years running a school cafeteria in Lakeland, Florida. One public elementary school, one kitchen, one quarry tile floor I stood on for six hours a day. By the time I retired, my thumbs had opened more jars than I could ever hope to count. Pickles for the potato salad. Mayonnaise by the gallon. Relish, salsa, applesauce, whatever that week's menu called for. I never thought about my hands back then. They were just the tool I used to do the job.

Five years ago, the year I retired, my doctor told me what I had already suspected. Osteoarthritis at the base of both thumbs, and in my right knee. She said it plainly, which I appreciated, and then she said the honest thing. Nothing was going to undo the wear that was already there. We would manage it. That was the whole conversation.

So last May I bought a KITCHENMUH electric jar opener. It is white, it sits flat on top of the lid, you press the button, and it does the gripping and the turning for you. That is the whole of it. I had put off buying one for about a year by then, and I want to tell you why, because I think a good many of you are doing the same thing in your own kitchens.

Here is the reason. Asking for help with a jar felt like admitting something. At Sunday dinner I would hand a jar of pickles to my daughter Paula's husband and say nothing about it, and he would open it in half a second, and I would thank him and feel about ninety years old. Paula lives ten minutes away and she is good to me, and I did not want to be a woman who cannot open her own pickles. That is not a sensible reason. It is the true one.

Before that I used a flat rubber gripper pad that lived in the drawer by the stove. I would run the lid under hot water first, the way my mother did, then wrap the pad around it and twist. Some days it worked. Some days it did not, and I would have to hunt the pad down because it had slid under the stove, and by then whatever was on the burner needed me. I still have that pad. It is still in the drawer. I have not touched it since.

Sunday dinner is the thing I was protecting. Paula and her husband come over every week and I cook for two to three hours, and I have never once cancelled it. It just got harder. I started sitting down partway through the cooking instead of standing the whole time, and I started choosing recipes by how many jars were involved, which is a ridiculous way to plan a meal and also exactly what I did.

Some days the rubber pad worked and some days it did not. But every day it was an argument I did not want to have with a jar of pickles.

It worked the first day. I set it on a jar of spaghetti sauce, pressed the button, and the lid came off. That is not a dramatic story and I know it. But I had spent a year managing a jar of pickles like it was a chore with its own schedule, and now it simply comes off. The KITCHENMUH lives on the counter beside the bread box. I do not put it in a drawer, because a thing you have to go find is a thing you will stop using.

It is not magic and I would rather be straight with you. It fits lids from 1.2 to 3.5 inches across, and a lid outside that range will not fit. On a very tight or very smooth lid it sometimes needs a second try. It does not open cans, and it will not help with a bottle that has one of those tiny caps. And those gallon pickle and mayonnaise jars I opened by hand for twenty-nine years? Those lids are bigger than this opener fits. I would have used it on the relish and the small jars, not the gallon ones.

My thumbs are not cured. Nothing I have bought cured anything. I still have arthritis, my right knee is still the bad one, and my doctor knows exactly what I take and what I use around the house. What changed is the number of times a day I get reminded of it. Sunday dinner still takes me two to three hours and I still sit down partway through. It is just that the jars are no longer the part that beats me.

More than nine thousand people have left a rating on this opener, and I would guess a fair number of them put it off for the same reason I did. It is a strange thing to be embarrassed by a lid. But I was, and if you are, I would tell you that the embarrassment lasts a good deal longer than the purchase does.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

Start with the simplest thing that helps and work your way up. For me that was a mat first, then a knee wrap, then the jar opener, and a cane last of all, and I resisted every single one of them longer than I should have. Check with your own doctor before you add anything, the same way I checked before I started a supplement, and be honest with her about what you are actually doing at home all day. She cannot help you with a problem you describe as nothing. And if a jar opener seems too small a thing to bother with, I would say that the small things are the ones that decide whether a kitchen still feels like yours.