Home safety should be your chief concern. Having a magnificent home and a beautiful landscape pales in comparison to the safety of your family. You can have both, but safety should be your first goal in all home and garden activities. We thought we would offer some home and garden safety tips for your home safety program.

Home safety personal protective equipment

When working around the home and garden always use the appropriate personal protective equipment. At the very least, wear long sleeves, long pants, a cap, boots, a dust mask, gloves, and eye protection.

These simple home safety precautions apply to almost all lawn and garden work, and activities with most power equipment, and striking tools.

Fertilizer application safety tips

For applying fertilizer, the listed equipment will serve well for protecting your skin, eyes, and lungs from fertilizer particles. Fertilizers contain minerals which are considered safe, but nonetheless, are damaging to mucous membranes, sinus, and lung tissues.

Chemical application safety tips

The same is true when applying chemicals, whether dusts, granules, or sprays. Read the label on anything you use and follow the directions exactly. They are there for a reason, and that reason is your safety, and the safety of others.

Home safety: Tools and equipment safety

Outdoor power equipment safety tips

When mowing and trimming, I recommend the use of the same protective gear. Organic matter like small particles of plants, dusts, pollen, mold spores, and other “fines” can irritate the skin, eyes, and respiratory system as much as fertilizers and chemicals. High speed equipment can sling small objects that can damage the eyes, and accidents with blades can severe hands and feet. Ear plugs should be added to the list when using power equipment.

Safety tips switches and guards

Power equipment safety switches and guards should be working properly, or the equipment should be taken out of service until the appropriate repairs are made.

Ladder safety tips

When using ladders, make sure that they are on a firm level footing, and secure. Do not place a ladder at an angle that places it too close to Parnell with the wall. Your weight at the top can make the ladder unstable. Step ladders usually have warnings on the rungs telling you to avoid stepping on or above the top wrung, or the top of the ladder. The warning is there for a reason. Follow their advice.

Hand tool home safety tips

When using hand tools, make sure the head is secure on any striking tools like hammers and axes.

Sharpen blades on cutting tools. A dull tool may appear less dangerous, but a dull tool requires more strength and energy, and when extra force is needed, control is lost. Sharp tools are more safe than dull tools.

Home safety: Storage

Store all tools and fuels and chemicals in a safe manner. Don’t store hazardous materials or fuel in your garage. There are too many things that can go wrong, and if they go wrong in an attached garage, they go wrong for the entire house! There are options, like building a garage separate from the home, or storing hazardous materials in a separate storage building. Make sure that the doors are properly locked to prevent accidents involving children. see also: Home hazardous material storage for more details.

Storing your tools safely is important for keeping your hand tools in good working order. Hand tools can fall prey to corrosion and moisture related problems which can render them unsafe. For more on this subject, see: Hand Tool Care And Hand Tool Safety

Home safety on or near the water

When working from a boat, a dock, or other areas on or near the water, wear a life jacket. You may be an Olympic swimmer, but even world class swimmers can be knocked unconscious before, or during a fall. A life preserver can preserve your life in such circumstances. Try not to work alone in such circumstances if at all possible.

There are many other home safety issues to address, we have listed a few of the most common, and most commonly ignored. If you have some home safety tips that you would like to share, feel free to do so in our comment section on this page.

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Storage sheds serve many purposes around the home, and one of the most important functions that most people never think of is safety. Frankly, there are a lot of things we use around our homes on a regular basis that can be hazardous to our families, pets, and property. Storing these things in a room attached to our homes is probably not the wisest choice. Two hazardous material types come to mind immediately:

Pesticides and fuel

Pesticides

A storage building can be the perfect way to keep your home pesticides and chemicals safe, and to keep your loved ones and pets safe as well.

If you perform your own home pest control, whether for your home, lawn, or garden, you should be careful how you mix them, how you apply them, how you dispose of any remaining mix, how you clean up afterward, and how you store the chemicals. The place to start is with the chemical safety labels.

The chemical safety labels contain all the information you should need to make the right choices, and stay within the bounds of standard safety practices, and the law. In fact, any trained pest control expert will tell you that the label is the law! The Label also states that: “It is a violation of federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with it’s labeling.”

Consider buying or building a storage building for the purpose of home hazardous material storage. This will allow you to keep them separated from the rest of your possessions. Having a garage full of pesticide fumes is not pleasant. Accidental spills could be a real safety issue for your family and pets. Why run the risk when you don’t have to. There is an easy solution, and it is worth the small expense.

Fuel

Fuels for internal combustion engines like diesel and gasoline, and heating fuels like kerosene are highly volatile, and under some circumstances, highly explosive. I am sure that I don't need to remind you that kerosene is jet fuel, and that 1 gallon of gasoline can have the explosive effect of several sticks of dynamite! Storing them in your garage next to internal combustion engines, and gas hot water heaters can be dangerous. Storing them with fertilizers can also be a problem. Having a separate area for hazardous material storage just makes sense. Use a storage shed for storing such combustibles away from the home.

Hazardous material storage design considerations

When designing your hazardous material storage shed, consider adding containment bins, something as simple as plastic tubs to control spills can save a lot of heartache. Also consider keeping a supply of cat litter or some other type of absorbent material handy. A cleanup area, complete with a water source is also recommended.

A means of good ventilation should also be considered. For normal home products storage, a vent near the top of the building, or a roof vent and a window at one end or on the side would probably be sufficient. Most chemical safety labels include storage requirements which should be followed strictly.

A steel fuel storage cabinet is a very good idea if you plan to store a substantial quantity of fuel.

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Most people don't think about the need to care for and maintain hand tools, but there are things you can do to make them work better and last longer.

Tools with wooden handles

Keep tools dry

Hammers, axes, hatchets and other striking tools with wooden handles should be kept as dry as possible. They should never be stored with the head on a floor. Condensation can soak into the wood fibers and expand the wood fibers against the sides of the metal holes, crushing the fibers. When the fibers dry, the handle will be loose, which is a particularly bad thing with striking tools that are used with high velocity for high impact. A loose head can become separated from it's handle at high speed, and cause physical injury to the user, or to property.

Keep tools sharp

Striking tools with sharp edges should be kept sharp. You might think that a sharp tool is more dangerous than a dull one, but the opposite is true. A dull tool requires more strength and energy to have the same effect. This extra energy expenditure causes fatigue and frustration, and leads to more accidents, plus, it slows the speed of work. Sharpening these tools is best done with a file in a vice. The file is bust used with long even pushing strokes going in one direction, and only against the blade with the cutting stroke. The reason for this is that pulling the file against the work on the non cutting stroke will dull the file.

Saws

Cutting tools like handsaws should be checked for handle tightness. Sharpening a handsaw can be a little difficult if you are not familiar with the process. It requires setting the teeth, a process of bending the teeth to the proper outward angle, filling all the teeth to the same level across the top, reshaping any teeth that no longer have a sharp tip as a result of such filing, and then sharpening the teeth to the original angle.

Some saws now available in this country are made after the Japanese style, which means that they cut on the pull stroke, and have no "set" on the teeth, which means that there is a more narrow "curf ", that is, the width of the cut made by the blade.

Metal tools

Metal tools like mechanics tools, pliers, and screwdrivers should be kept rust free, and a light coat of oil is great for this. Just be sure to wipe them dry when in use.

Garden tools

Garden tools should be checked for handle tightness, and the same rules as striking tools apply. Keep them clean, and a coating of linseed oil will help to protect them from moisture and rust.

Storing hand tools

An important part of tool care is having a well organized proper place to store them. If you have a lot of hand tools, it would probably be wise to use some of them to build a place to store your tools. Garage storage can be a problem unless you have a specific area sectioned off just for tools,but, no matter where you store them, tools should be kept out of the weather for safety and longevity.

Do you have suggestions for caring for hand tools? We would love to hear from you! Leave your suggestions in the comment area.

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Declutter Your Home For Peace Of Mind

Our lives are cluttered enough as it is. We have more things to do than we can do. We have more people to see than we can see, and we have more meetings to attend than we can attend, and keeping up with all of this can be stressful enough without having to deal with the stress of cluttered homes and offices.

We all have a tendency to be a little messy. Sometimes we don’t put things away. Sometimes we just don’t have the energy or the time, but until we take that initial step, the problem will continue to grow. Once we are well organized, there will be a place for everything, and everything will be in it’s place. What you are reading now, may be that first step! Once you develop a mental habit of organizing, you will feel better about yourself and your surroundings. You will feel more energetic, less fatigued, and better prepared to face the other challenges of daily life.

How do we get clutter?

Clutter can be the result of several things. We may be too tired to clean up after ourselves, we may be so pressed for time that we are not able to sort through the things we have. We may just have so many possessions that we feel we have nowhere to put them, or no time, or energy to put them away even if we had a place.

The ironic fact is, that the clutter may be causing the tiredness to begin with!

The dangers of clutter

Clutter can be dangerous in more ways than you can imagine lets look at both the physical and psychological effects

Physical health hazards

Clutter can provide a hiding place for things you don't want in your house, like insects and vermin. It can also be a danger if it really gets out of control. I am sure we have all at one time or another felt that our closets should be designated as hardhat zones, and that our living room and bed room was full of trip hazards. That is just the tip of the iceberg though. The real cost of disorganization is the psychological cost.

Mental health hazards

We feel unorganized when our surroundings are unorganized, and that uneasy feeling you get when you go inside your home or office that you would never mention to another living soul, that may be a result of messy surroundings and nothing else! This effects our attitudes and our relationships adversely, so getting rid of the mess may get rid of our poor attitudes. Clutter in your home or office may be a mental health hazard!

How to get started

If you are an organized individual, you probably know how to handle this sort of thing, and you probably wouldn’t be reading this to begin with, but for the rest of us mere mortals, we may need a little help with with the missing important parts of the puzzle, like, how to get started to begin with! Maybe you could use a few delutter tips. Try this one, and a lot of the rest will fall into place:

Start with something small, and see it through to the end. If you start with a big heavily cluttered room, you will probably tire of the project mid way, and more doubt and dread will cloud your mind. You will likely end up sitting in the middle of a room with tons of stuff to be sorted, and no energy to do it. The task will appear more difficult, plus, you will have piles of clutter to come back to when one of life's little interruptions calls you away. Pick a single closet, or maybe start with your car, and when that is done, you will feel better about your chances of success.

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