When a home is not a fortress: how to make your home safe for children, the elderly and everyone else

When arranging their home, many pay attention to how the interior looks, but forget about the main thing - safety. Although it seems that a priori there cannot be anything in the home that would somehow harm people, we are constantly surrounded by objects that can cause health problems and even deaths.

Bedroom

Most often, people get injured as a result of falling when they turn off the light and try to walk to bed in the dark. Therefore, it is important to place switches in two places - near the door and near the place where the person sleeps.

It is undesirable to throw clothes and books on the floor - if you have to leave the room in a hurry during a natural disaster or fire, they will be easy to get caught on. Charger cords are even more dangerous - if home owners have the habit of charging a phone or laptop in the bedroom, it is worth securing all the cables along the walls or on top of the furniture.

Balcony

While on the balcony, a person faces several dangers, but the main one is falling down. To avoid accidents, you need to ensure that:

• the fence was quite high and strong;
• it was impossible to crawl between the fence bars (this is important if small children live in the house);
• If there were ropes for drying clothes located outside, it was possible to hang and remove things without bending over the fence (for example, using special devices).

Living room

If there is a rug in the living room and it is not secured in any way, sooner or later someone will get caught on the edge or slip and fall. You can reduce the likelihood of such an incident by gluing the carpet to the floor using double-sided tape or placing heavy furniture on it.

Collapse of wall shelves, pictures in wooden or metal frames is another problem. In old houses, it is undesirable to place a large load on the walls, especially if there is a recreation area (sofas and armchairs) nearby.

Kitchen

A source of increased danger in the kitchen is a gas stove:

• An open fire can cause curtains to catch fire if a window is open and a gust of wind catches them. To avoid fire, you should use curtains that are tightly attached to the frames or the wall.
  
• An adult or child can get burned by touching a hot surface, so immediately after cooking you need to cover the hob with a special lid (if available).
• Accidentally opening a faucet will cause a gas leak and can lead to suffocation of residents or an explosion that will destroy the supporting structures of the house. If the apartment is inhabited by people with mental illness or children who do not understand the dangers of gas, it is worth replacing the stove with an induction one.

Electrical outlets are essential in the kitchen, but they can also cause disaster if they are installed close to the sink or gas stove. Moisture, as well as the proximity of an open fire, can cause a short circuit in the electrical network and fire of electrical wiring.It’s quite easy to protect yourself and your family - you need to make sure that the distance to the sockets is at least 1 m. It is also advisable to invite a professional electrician to assess the load on the network.

Bathroom

The bathroom is perhaps fraught with more dangers than any other room in the house:

• Slipping on a wet tiled floor is much easier than it seems, so the first thing you need to do is buy a rug with a rubberized coating for the bathroom. Another option is anti-slip tile stickers. With their help, you can also protect yourself from falling in the bathroom or shower.
• If the house is inhabited by elderly people or those who have problems with coordination of movements, it is worth fixing special handrails on the walls.
  
• Detergents are also often stored in the bathroom. If you have small children, you need to make sure that cabinets with household chemicals are out of their reach (for example, locked or hung high above the floor).
• Mold poses an invisible threat to health - it forms in the form of black spots on the ceiling, at the joints of tile seams, and in the shower stall. Its spores, which scatter in large quantities throughout the room and enter the respiratory system, lead to allergies, bronchial asthma and other serious diseases. To get rid of mold, you should properly organize ventilation and make sure that the bathroom is not too humid.

Making your home safe doesn't require major modifications—just adjusting the location of wires and electrical outlets, making sure heavy objects are securely fastened, and eliminating the risk of slipping on wet floors.