Is Your Home Safe??

 

 

When it comes to your house, safety should be your first concern. Have you ever really taken a critical look at your house and realized that it may not be as safe as we thought? Here are some steps that will help you get your home in top safety condition. I will take you through areas inside and outside of your house spotlight those areas that may need some help.

So let’s begin by looking at the exterior of your house, because this is the first thing that we see when we drive into the driveway. So here are some things that you need to look at on the exterior of your house.

• Look at your house from your driveway or your street. Can you clear see your front door? Or is it cluttered with tons of stuff people can hide behind.
• Also make sure that the lights on the outside of your house are working. Change any bulbs that are burnt out. Also it might be a good idea to price and see about installing a light that has a motion detector on it. This is a great deterrent for criminals.
• Check your shrubs, flower beds, and hedges near your house. Are they neatly trimmed or are they a hot mess? Sadly I will have to say that ours is a hot mess, but only halfway. That is quickly moving up on my to do list or should I say my husband’s to do list.
• Look up at trees that are around your house. Are there branches and limbs that are lose or broken that could be a potential hazard. Try to remove all debris that could cause a problem.
• Inspect your driveway. If your driveway has potholes you will need to fill those in. They are not only a potential hazard for visitors but they are also murder on your car.
• Walk around your yard. Look for holes that might need to be filled. During this walk you might also want to look for poison ivy, bee and wasps nest as well as fire ant hills. They seem to pop out of nowhere. This is definitely something that my husband does quite often because my daughters and I are all highly allergic to these things.
• Also you might want to keep garbage pails, wood bins, and recyclables away from the house. They are just a party waiting to happen for roaches, termites and ants. And we all know what damage they can cause.
• If you have a garage door check to make sure the garage door is working properly.

Enough about the outside of the home let’s move into the inside and address areas of concern.

• The first thing that you should check are the doors in your home that take you outside. First and foremost, you want to see if they lock properly. But you also want to check to make sure they open easily. Here are some other questions you need to ask as well. Are your doors strong, will they withhold brute force whether it is from an intruder or a storm? Do your locks work smoothly or do you have to fight them every time that you go to unlock them? Do you have a weatherproof seal that won’t allow for leaks from a heavy rain? Also look to see if there is a gap between the door and the trim that can be pried open easily from the outside. Sometimes we live in our own little world and forget things like this.
• Also is there a light near all the doors that you enter from the outside. We have a light switch by all of our doors. I don’t know about you but I hate coming into a dark house at night.
• Look at your floors. Do you have floors that appear warped and buckled? These need to be replaced. Take my word for it; it is easily to replace it before too much damage is done. In one of our former houses, the floors where so bad we ended up looking at either replacing all the floors or moving. We ended up moving LOL. That was not the main reason we moved but it was factor. Make sure that all rugs are tacked down to make sure there are no unwanted trips or falls.
• Check your windows for leaks and make sure the locks are not broken. Also look and see if a fire were to break out would you be able to get out in a hurry.
• Test any of your peeling paint. This is something you cannot do yourself but you can hire a company to do your home safety inspection. While they are there make sure that you get them to check for mold as well.

These are overall items that are in every room, but here is a little list for the more specific areas of the house.

1. Bathroom-

• Install nonstick mats in bathtubs and showers.
• Install a grab bar in the tub/shower and near the toilet. You might not need it now but you never know when you will.
• Keep a nightlight near the entrance of the bathroom

 

1. Kitchen-

• Clean the exhaust fan over the stove once a year.
• Change the filter over the stove once a year.

 

These are just a few of the items that you can do to make sure that your home is safest place on earth you can be. Because after all home is where the heart is. If you are looking for more ways to make your home safety I found as I was researching, this company, AA All Services Electrical, based in Ft Worth that had some valuable information on their website.

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