 Hello there, my beautiful, lovely, talented internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you so much for joining me here today on Footless Joe. I wanted to take you through an amputee tour of my house, me being a below knee amputee. If you don't know, I'm missing part of a leg and I have been this way for just about two years now and I've lived in this house for just about five years. We didn't really consider the possibility of moving when I had my amputation because that wasn't realistically a financial option for us at that point and it still isn't. So we've had to adjust the place that we have living without a limb and that comes with its own unique set of creativity and challenges. I've adapted a lot of different areas of my house to work a little bit better for me and more than that, I think I figured out different adaptations and different ways of making this space work for me. It's definitely not the ideal house play out for someone who is missing part of a leg as I am but we make it work and I'm super, super, super, super grateful to have this space. So a lot of you guys have been asking for this video for quite some time and I'm excited to show you my space. If you see any places in my house that I'm like adapting to something or doing something a certain way and you're like, actually, there'd be a much simpler way of doing that, please let me know in the comment section down below. I'd love to hear from you. Before we continue on with this video, I'm very excited to introduce you to our sponsor, Skillshare. I'm really psyched about this sponsor in particular because this is a learning community and a platform that I honestly have used every week for a number of months now. If you haven't heard about it, Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes and courses for creative and curious people. But most recently, I started taking a class by Danielle Kirsa called Creative Breakthrough. It's all about exploring your own creativity and breaking through those walls that hold us back. Creativity is a safe haven. It's a place we can explore ourselves, further solidify our voices and what we believe in what we think. And I really appreciate that Skillshare is a platform where you can do just that. Whether you're staying home and getting bored with watching Netflix or focus on self-care or learn a brand new skill, Skillshare enables you to continue learning. Now for the best part, Skillshare is giving away two free months of a premium membership to the first 1,000 people who click on the link in the description box to help you explore your creativity. After that, it's about $10 a month. I would highly endorse it. I'd highly recommend checking out. Link is down below and Skillshare, thank you again for sponsoring this video. Without further ado, let's head downstairs to my family room where I spent most of the time recovering from my amputation and where I spend most of my time presently. So I live in a tri-level home meaning that there's a little set of stairs and a super cute puppy. And then there's another set of stairs around that corner which will go up in just a second. Oh, Sophie wants to say hi. You got an edge, baby? So right over here, we have a huge puppy bed couch that I was given a while ago by a delightful company, I'll link it down below. We have Sadie Bear presently enjoying her time in her puppy couch. We got a little monkey up there hoping to get fed, but it's not time. It's just not time yet. And now that I've come downstairs, the dogs definitely think it's time to eat and are gonna yell at me until I feed them. So this is our downstairs family room. This is where we chill and watch Netflix on the couch. I told you my life is not YouTuber picture perfect. It's full of lots of noises. Right over here is one of the best modifications I've ever made to my house, living life without a limb, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who's able to do this. What we have right over here is a mini fridge downstairs. Now that might seem kind of silly because our kitchen is right up there, right? However, when I'm sitting down to work from the couch back here or when we're just chilling down here or I'm playing a game or talking to people or whatever, sometimes I'll take my leg off and it's really hard to get back up the stairs with no leg, but that means like get a drink of water. Like one of my dogs is doing right now behind me or any little thing like that. I have to put my leg on, get back up the stairs or I'm hopping and crawling, which I don't like to do. So having this fridge right here has been fantastic, especially for days when I'm especially exhausted or in a lot of pain. I can just lay down on the couch and know that I have like a couple of healthy snacks in here and some cold water, which I really like having around. I'm being surrounded. Here is the couch. Something I always have on my couch. A heating pad. One thing that was really kind of a surprise to me living life without a limb is that a lot of the rest of your body gets really sore, gets really tight. Human bodies aren't really meant to walk on pieces of metal even if they're very well engineered pieces of metal. And so I'll have a heating pad around me at most times I've went upstairs as well that I keep near me to help with some of that pain, some of that soreness so that when I'm sitting down here chilling, I have it right here. I don't have to get up and do anything. This right here is my spot. Sophie likes to think it's hurt sometimes. Oh my gosh. So this couch right here, we got from Ikea actually right before I had my first bologna amputation. A big reason for that is because we knew that I was gonna be sleeping downstairs. A lot of the time it was just easier for me not to transition and like move up two flights of stairs being a fresh amputee. And it has that chase, is that what it's called? It has the long part on the end over there where Brian could sleep. And so I'd sleep on this side, he'd sleep on that side and it was really sweet of him to do that for me for weeks actually. We stayed down here and we could both sleep on this couch. And now it serves as great puppy space because they think it's their couch and wherever we sit there, they're totally crowding our space now. So TV, nothing super interesting there. We do have a wood burning fireplace which I really love. I love the smell of an actual fire fire. We haven't used it that much in recent years but I would definitely like to start using a little bit more. Let's head over to the bathroom downstairs. I was super glad that we have this bathroom through here. It's also my laundry room when I was recovering from surgery because I didn't have to leave this level. I didn't have to deal with stairs to use the bathroom to wash my face, anything like that. So coming through here, so side note, my dogs really love car rides and I think that they think that they're gonna go on one because I opened the door in an excited voice. Now they're gonna be sadly disappointed but this is the laundry room right behind it is the bathroom. Something that I try to be pretty aware of is keeping this space clean. Right now, that's a great example of this not happening not only with a shepherd in the way but also with these laundry baskets. This is gonna sound like a really small thing because it is but not having things on the floor, not having things in my way, whether or not I'm using my prosthetic leg, whether I'm using crutches or anything like that is really important because I have tripped over things before, I've not gotten hurt at home, thankfully but it's hard to move around and to navigate spaces when there are unexpected obstacles in the way like laundry baskets. So I usually try to do a better job of keeping that out of the way and Brian usually helps me with that. All right, so this is the bathroom where I spent the majority of my time after surgery. Not like I was in here all the time but you know what I mean. We have a really small shower back here which Monkey is currently occupying because it's about to storm and she doesn't like storms and showers make her feel safer but what we did in here was we put a shower chair, I'm gonna show you that upstairs because I was finally able to move upstairs and then over here we installed my toilet with handles on it. I actually love that this toilet has those handles because especially if I'm hopping or I'm on crutches and I'm trying to like get down on one leg to use the restroom or sit down, having something to hold on to has been more useful than I thought it would be there have been times where I could have fallen off the side which have been horribly embarrassing and painful but thankfully the handles were there and I didn't have that issue. This is one modification that I would recommend for anyone dealing with any kind of lower limb issues be it an amputation or a surgery. It didn't take that long to install, it wasn't that expensive and it has been fantastically helpful. Let's move back upstairs to my kitchen. All right, before we continue this tour I'm gonna have to feed these puppies. They're not gonna leave me alone until I do that. Are you hungry girls? Are you happy girls? That good food. So my sweet little Sophie here always lays down to eat her food which I think is adorable. My other dogs don't do that. I don't know why she does that. Let me know if you're a dog behavior expert and you have any idea why. So once we get to the top of the stairs here, here is my possibly favorite part of the house, my coffee and tea zone. I absolutely love it. So I have a bunch of different kinds of teas in here and then over here we have more of the, here's a lot of different kinds of beans that I'm still trying out. And then the kitchen. So one thing I am sincerely really grateful for about this kitchen is that it's not that big. Like, you know, side to side I can pretty much touch any counter at any time and that's coming really handy for balance. When I'm in here and I'm on the eye walk or crutches or hopping around or even if I'm having a bad day and I'm limping a lot on my prosthetic and I don't have great balance. I'm never gonna fall too far, right? Like there's always a counter edge to hold on to or to stabilize. That's been great when I am trying to make things in the kitchen or do the dishes or anything along those lines. I'll be honest, there's not that much to see here because I am not a great chef. Neither Brian and I are particularly fantastic at making food. We get by cooking is something I would definitely like to learn more about in the future. Okay, so coming over here is the dining room along with a tennis ball. And oh look, another tennis ball. So this is a space we're still very much trying to work on. We used to have a big fish tank over in that corner. We don't have that anymore. I'm not sure that I like how this shelf right here looks. I kind of feel like it looks a little bit crowded. Let me know what you think. Then over here we have Brian's desk. Sometimes I'll steal it and work there but for the most part that's where he does this thing. And then my favorite, favorite area, my art table. This was a gift that was given to me at Christmas a couple of years ago and it's just been wonderful to have. I used to do all my art just sitting at the kitchen table or something like that and that was wonderful. There was nothing wrong with that but it's great to have a space where I can actually have all my paints, have all my brushes, not be shoving them in a cupboard somewhere. All right, let's head upstairs. Okay, starting over here, this is Brian's bathroom and pretty much only Brian's bathroom. It used to be mine too. This is where I would get ready every morning but I discovered that when I became an amputee, trying to get in and out of a tub that has a lip on it was really difficult for me. We thought about putting my shower chair in there. It just didn't work. There wasn't the space for it so I'm really, really, really grateful that we had another space. We could do that. Trying to transfer in and out of a bathtub when you have one leg can be a little bit dangerous and I've done it before. I've done it before many times whether it was traveling or just taking a bath here but for everyday use, I wanted something that was a little bit more safe and so I set up my bathroom in the other bathroom which I'll show you here in just a moment. Okay, so over here we have Cakes' room. I think this little cat door is so cute. So she's able to access this room without the dogs bugging her. I don't know where she is right now. We're gonna find her. There is another tennis ball. Is that yours? Is that yours? Oh no, that's yours. Oh, you stole it, okay. So over here we have my office. So in my office, we also have my rat cage. Right now, Sally is sleeping. So this is another space and I'm trying to figure out how to better organize. The only however here right now is my upstairs coffee pot, some random camera gear like my microphone, batteries, things like that. You've probably seen this backdrop for some of my videos. I wanna kind of reorganize their shelves and make it a little less hectic looking but it is how it is right now. So I really like my desk area right here. This is where I spend the majority of my time editing and things of that nature. I'm hoping to find another chair for this desk maybe through like Facebook Marketplace or something like that because this chair is really uncomfortable and makes my lower back which is already kind of frustrated most of the time because of the prosthetic leg hurt a little bit less. For the most part, I really love my desk area right now. I have a monitor that I can plug into that makes it a lot easier to edit videos and things like that. As you guys know, I also work a job on top of doing YouTube. And so this is where I'm working. This is where I have most of my video meetings and things of that nature. And it's really, it's coming together slowly but surely I don't feel like this room is done. Like there are definitely other things I'd like to do in here. But right now it works. And last but not least, here we have our master bedroom. And here we have one of the best features in the whole room. Not that there are a lot of features in the room but this is a bed by MajesticBeds. They sent this to me about two months ago now and I was really curious to see what I would think of it. I had a sleep number bed for a really long time which was okay. I thought it was okay until I sat on this thing and realized this is absolutely, it makes a difference what you sleep on. I do have an affiliate code through them. I'm gonna pop that down below. You can get $1,000 off some of their mattresses. I would highly recommend it if you're looking for a new mattress but it's something I'm so, so, so grateful that we have. I absolutely love it. However, I will say it's a lot taller than my, oh, hello cakes. It's a lot taller than my other bed meaning that my comforter doesn't like fully cover and it looks kind of awkward. If any interior designers have any idea how to make this look better, let me know. And this is their sweet baby cakes. You may have seen me do a video about this but this was actually gifted to me by the company. I am eternally grateful for it. I use it most days of the week. And over here is my biking leg. Yes, I do have to use a whole different leg to get on a bike. I pop this on every morning when I wanna use it. I just keep the shoe on all the time and never even have to take it off because there's no other foot that's gonna fit on that right foot. And I use that for this little corner right here. I do feel like it's a little bit cramped in here with the bike being in here but we figured out after thinking about for a while that this was really the most logical place for it. We also do not have AC in our house which is why I am sweating profusely right now so that's an AC unit that we turn on just at night to kinda cool it down so we can both get some sleep. Okay, so now on to my bathroom. This is what I use every day. I feel like bathrooms are always where a lot of the big modifications when it comes to being an amputee are gonna be. For instance, I always keep my eye walk in here when I'm not using it or my prosthetic leg if I'm using my eye walk. This right here I use for more stability and more balance as I'm navigating here. That's actually a painting I gifted Brian many years ago. I was one of the first acrylic paintings that I did and I gave it to him for his birthday. So right over here I hang my shrinkers. So shrinkers are what I put on every night when I take my prosthetic leg off. They help my leg retain its shape, not get too swollen overnight. They also just add some pressure which helps with pain sometimes. So I have a few of them, I just keep them hung up over there because at the end of the day, I come in here, I sit down and I take my leg off and I can pop this on and I'm just able to either use my eye walk to get back over to the bed or sometimes if I'm being especially bad, I just hop, which is to be honest with you most times. I've been told multiple times that you shouldn't really hop that much as an amputee because it wears out your other foot, it can lead to stress factors over time so I try to limit it. But honestly it's hard not to hop short distances because otherwise you have to go through the hassle of getting crutches or wearing eye walk or whatever it is. Okay, so now we have my shower. The only actually interesting feature in here is my shower chair. When I've been traveling I didn't think ahead, I've definitely used a shower before without a shower chair anywhere to sit down but it actually does get pretty dangerous pretty quickly and I can do it, it's just that it's really dangerous to stand up on one foot in a shower because things get wet and slippery and it's better not to take that risk. For a long time I was kind of resistant to wearing, like to sitting on a shower chair at home because I felt like, like it was one thing I didn't want to give up, like I wanted to stand in the shower like a normal person and frankly it took me a little while to let go of that part of my ego and be like, dude sit down, take care of your body, don't slip and fall and make things worse. So now I sit down pretty much all the time when I'm in the shower but yeah, it took us a little while to convert this bathroom into like my bathroom before we weren't really using it at all but we got a new little shower carton in here and some mats on the ground and now I really like it. Hi there, you can pretty much always find Sophie at least a room away from wherever I am. She's my little protector, she always has to be where I am. Look at that sweet little face. So that concludes my amputee house tour as I said it's not a super big house but we like it that way. I honestly could never see myself living in a really big house like more than 2000 square feet I feel like would be exhausting to take care of. I don't know, both Brian and I before my amputation used to be really really specific about keeping the house clean and orderly and tidy and clean all the time and as life has evolved, as I had my amputation, as I've been working my job and YouTube as much as I do I realized I don't have the physical capacity to put as much time into this house as I used to. And so being okay, this is gonna sound silly but like being okay with the fact that my floors are dirty right now and that's not the end of the world took a little while to get used to because I used to get so stressed about it I had to have everything clean and tidy all the time and now sometimes it's like, you know what? Yeah, there are clumps of dog hair in the corners of my house right now. Is that particularly sanitary? No, do I have the energy to take care of it right now? No, is my body hurting too much to take care of it right now? Yes, so I'm just gonna relax. It took a while for me to get out of this mindset of everything has to be perfect for me to relax and breathe. I'm getting a lot better at that. Okay, so though I love the house we have the fact that there are two sets of stairs in it to get to all vital areas like the kitchen is on one floor the living room is on one floor and then our bedrooms are on one floor that is definitely not ideal. When we're able to move moving into a ranch house which is all one level is like a must for us we need to have one level. I would like to be able to use things like those rolling crutches that you just put your knee on, right? It's almost like a scooter, it's like a knee scooter, right? I feel like that would really help me get around places faster and use less energy but I can't really do that here because of all of the stairs in all the different areas and that's okay for now. This house was definitely not built to work with someone who has a disability but we've made it work for us and it's not been that big of a deal. There are still a few things that I would like to add and modify in my house like for instance that grab bar and the shower I think would really be good a couple other things here and there but for the most part I like what we have I'm so grateful that we have this house. I feel like it's not that picture perfect YouTube house tour that everyone gives. I've watched a few of those and everything's so bright and white and pretty and well lit and that was one of the reasons I held off making that video because I was like, well my house tour video isn't gonna look like that but this is what life realistically looks like for us. If you don't know me, I'm Joe. I'm missing a leg below my knee. My husband is able-bodied but works his ass off all the time so we're both very busy people dealing with things as you are as well and this is the space we have. I just filled the flots of love with my cat cakes over there I don't know if you can see here and our three dogs and my one rat. We recently have lost a few pets which has really been heartbreaking but our house is still warm and lovely by the ones that we have. If you have any suggestions on what I could do to alter things to make them a little easier to get around on with one leg that would be awesome. A lot of the time when I get home from a day of work or doing stuff or doing whatever, my leg hurts and I just wanna take my prosthetic off and there are a lot of times where I don't do that because I know I'm have to get up in 20 minutes or 30 minutes and get all the way back upstairs. I know that that sounds like small things but it all takes a lot of energy and I'll often just leave my leg on for another hour while we're sitting there instead of having to take it off and put it back on. Yeah, so there are definitely things I'd like to change in the future and modify and upgrade but for right now what we have is awesome. I don't know if you can hear all that barking but it means my husband just got home so to you watching this video thank you for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today. I really appreciate it. You could be anywhere in the world doing anything and he chose to hang out with me for a few minutes and I really appreciate that. I love you guys. I'm thinking about you and I'll see you in the next video. Say. Have her from the sky all about the whispers of fire. Do you ever feel like going back?