This Foam Tube Makes My Apple Pencil Usable, Even During Arthritis Flares

My arthritis is mainly in my hands. I mean, it’s in my whole body, but I feel it in my hands. Recently, it’s been feeling worse (as previously mentioned, it felt worse becasue it was worse!), and I was finding it painful to use my hands at all, and I needed a solution that would work faster than a change in medication.

I use an Apple Pencil almost every day, and in my hunt for a comfy grip to make writing easier, I found this set of six foam tubes that can make anything (that fits in the tubes) have a nice chunky, comfy grip. An Apple Pencil fits in the yellow and the red, but I use red because it’s easier to get the pencil in and out of the tube (you need to remove the grip to charge the pencil and store it on the side of your iPad). You get two of each size, and because you cut them to whatever size you need, you could end up with many, many grips for all sorts of things.

The fact that I had three backups (because both red and yellow worked) meant I wasn’t too nervous about cutting up the tube. I knew I wanted the foam to cover as much of the pencil as possible, while still being usable, so it took a few tries. Just remember, you can always cut off more, you can’t put more back on.

Because I got two pencil grips out of one tube, I keep one next to my bed and one next to my couch, so I can use my Apple Pencil wherever I’m lounging at the moment. It’s also super lightweight and squishy, so you can toss it in any bag or even a pocket and take it on the road with you. I shopped around a LOT for various pencil grips, because I knew specifically what I wanted, and knew it had to exist somewhere. After a ton of research, the best scenario, at least for me, was to buy six foam tubes for $11. Now, to figure out what I’m going to do with five other foam tubes…