This episode could be described as "home safety but make it fun." If you've ever thought even a little bit about how to make your home safer when it comes to accidents, injuries, and the like, this episode is for you.
In this episode, we talk all about our favorite ways to prevent and deal with unforeseen dangers and possible accidents in the home. We promise it’s actually a pretty fun topic! As self-proclaimed safetyheads, we couldn’t be more excited to talk not only about all of our favorite safety-related tips, tricks, and methods, but also to explore the origins of our respective passions for living that safety life.
This episode was produced by Rachel and Sally and edited by Lucas Nguyen. Our logo was designed by Amber Seger (@rocketorca). Our theme music is by Tiny Music. MJ Brodie transcribed this episode. Follow us on Twitter @OhILikeThatPod.
Things we talked about
Rachel: Welcome to Oh I Like That, a podcast about things we like, and occasionally things we don't. I'm Rachel Wilkerson Miller.
Sally: And I'm Sally Tamarkin. We have a pretty fun episode planned today, Rachel.
Rachel: I'm so psyched. This might be my favorite episode thus far.
Sally: Yeah. It definitely falls into the things we like category.
Rachel: Yeah. It's going to be a good one, but let's kick things off with a vibe check. So what's your vibe, Sally?
Sally: My vibe is the 'it's been 84 years' meme.
Rachel: [Laughs]
Sally: Since I had a full night of sleep. So that is one thing. And then the other thing is that, you know, the vibe is okay. We are post-coup attempt when we are recording this, maybe impeachment is happening, maybe not, who can say. As usual we're in the midst of socio-political chaos, which, I assume we will also be in the midst of chaos next week when people listen to this. But, you know, the nature of the chaos might change between now and then.
Rachel: Yeah. Doing these recordings has really brought to light exactly how often we're in chaos that changes week to week and how unpredictable things are. So who can say. So the vibe is America, and for better or for worse and yeah.
Sally: America: who can say.
Rachel: Yeah, exactly. So my personal vibe is also good, chilling, feeling all right. But the macro vibe is absolutely terrible.
Sally: Yeah. We contain multitudes this morning here on Oh I Like That.
Rachel: Exactly. But regardless of the chaos, hopefully this episode will be a bright spot.
Sally: Love it. Absolutely.
Rachel: Let's hope. Yeah.
Sally: That's what we're going with. All right. So let's, without further delay, immediately start talking about our next segment, which I'm completely committed to totally over-hyping before we even start.
Rachel: I know [laughs]. So to introduce this segment, we are going to play a clip from an episode of At Home with Amy Sedaris.
Calvin: Hi, my name's Calvin Shuckles, longtime crafter. If there's one thing I've learned, you must begin every crafting session with the attitude "I'm going to die today."
Rachel: So if you haven't guessed from that clip, which you very likely will not have, this segment is about safety. And before we kick things off, I just want to mention that we are going to be talking about minor to moderate injuries, and specifically there'll be some mention of cuts and bleeding. So if that's the kind of thing that makes you feel really light headed or that you just can't handle, this might not be the episode for you, but we'll try to keep it to a minimum as much as we can.
Sally: Totally. Yeah. So safety is a thing that we have discovered we both love to think about and talk about. There are a lot of different kinds of safety. We're specifically going to be talking about safety at home, with a couple of exceptions. So we both, I think, come at this topic with just a lot of, we have our 10,000 hours in thinking about safety.
Rachel: I agree completely.
Sally: And as we were planning the segment, we sort of unearthed our own origin stories of how we came to start thinking about safety and being interested in it. So we thought maybe, just to give listeners a little bit more context of who we are and how we're coming at safety, we would share those.
Rachel: All right, Sally, do you want to take us back to your childhood and kick things off?
Sally: Yes. I'm going to take us back to the early to mid eighties, little Sally was growing up in New Haven, Connecticut, and there is a street in New Haven that is, its formal name is Ella T Grasso Boulevard. It is referred to by locals as the Boulevard. It's a busy street -- in different parts of the city it is busier than others, so in our neighborhood, it was just a busy one lane, two way street. But in other parts of the city there are more lanes and whatever. But it cut through our relatively quiet neighborhood, but people would zoom across it. And there are parts of it that are a little hilly. And so depending on where you are crossing the Boulevard, you may not have amazing visibility. One of the very first safety things that really, really, really stuck with me was my mom imploring us to be cautious anytime we crossed the Boulevard, particularly when we got to the age where we were kind of walking around the neighborhood by ourselves. And I took this to heart so much that as I would approach the Boulevard -- and honestly, whenever I'm home in New Haven and I'm driving and I come to the Boulevard, like at an intersection, my heart starts to beat a little faster because I am sort of like, you know, crossing the Boulevard just increases your chances of dying by 75%. That just has been ingrained in me. And I share that story because I feel like it informs my entire posture towards safety, which is: it's not necessarily about living in fear. It's about taking seriously the moments when you're encountering something that is slightly more dangerous than doing nothing at all. Just be a little bit more aware of what's going on.
Rachel: I think I am similar. I thought you were going to say, "My philosophy on safety is just see death everywhere," which, you know, sometimes that too, but yeah, I think just being aware of your body and space and actually knowing what... whether this is true of the Boulevard or not, but knowing what sort of statistically or historically is likely to actually be a danger point.
Sally: Totally. And let me just say that when I am at my most either stressed out or tired or anxious, seeing death everywhere is for sure my posture. What I aspire to is just an elevated sense of keeping myself safe.
Rachel: Yeah.
Sally: So just a couple more things I'll go through really quickly that have really informed my safety beliefs. When I was a kid, there was a toy called super elastic bubble plastic. And what this was, was a tube of a viscous plasticky substance.
Rachel: Okay...
Sally: And what you would do is you would squeeze a little tiny ball of this substance, and you would put it on the end of a straw which also came in the package, and you would blow up these liquidy plastic bubbles. Now, I really wanted this really bad. And when I talk about it now, it doesn't seem like a fun toy, but I guess it was like, you would get this soft kind of balloony plastic thing. So my mom would not let me have it, and the reason is, what was in the tube was such a noxious and toxic-smelling substance that my mom very rightly was like, yes, it's being sold in a store, but certainly that should not be anywhere near where my child can possibly inhale it. And I was like, "But mom, the whole thing is that you're exhaling to blow up the balloon." And her thing was like, well, I mean, you know, anytime you have a kid and a straw, I feel like there's some chance of user error and and also just, should something toxic be near your mouth?
Rachel: Right.
Sally: Probably not. And later -- so I was looking this up on Wikipedia because I wanted to talk about this. And here's what it says: "Besides the potential for spills when liquid plastic was handled by children, the substance also emitted noxious fumes. The fumes could become concentrated inside the straw, making it dangerous to inhale through the straw while inflating a bubble. Because of these problems, Super Elastic Bubble Plastic was eventually discontinued." And this is... shout out to my mom for just trusting her instincts, because I think a lot of... the thing that you and I have been talking about a lot when it comes to safety is that you really have to make your own evaluation about if a thing or a situation is safe. Just because there's something that you can buy and use or there's something that you can do, it doesn't necessarily mean it's safe.
Rachel: Yeah.
Sally: And I think that my mom really modeled just trusting your gut around a thing. And I, for my money, I think the trust your gut thing is one of the most important things you can have in your mind and in your body when you're thinking about keeping yourself safe.
Rachel: Yeah. I don't know if we've talked about The Gift of Fear on this podcast, but it is a book that is about that exactly. And the basic thesis is, your gut knows. When you feel like something is off it's because you're picking up on certain things that you are not necessarily conscious of. So that's obviously about situations that don't really involve household safety, but I think that just in general, a reminder that if you're feeling nervous about something, if something gives you pause, there's probably a reason.
Sally: Absolutely. Yeah. Man, The Gift of Fear is so good. Two other, just really quick ones. My dad was extremely committed to making sure we understood that any time we are holding scissors, unless we are actively cutting something, we are to grip them with our fist around the blade.
Rachel: Yes. Facing down.
Sally: Facing down. Yes. I still do this. I still stress about doing this. I do too. I stress about it. I think about it every single time we're holding scissors. I certainly don't run with scissors. I almost don't even think I'd want to be walking with scissors. It just seems like you've got to be gripping them right or certain disaster is on its way.
Rachel: Yep.
Sally: The other really quick thing is that my parents had a rule that I was not allowed to ride in a car with anyone who had had a license and been driving for fewer than six months. And when I was in high school, when I was a freshman, I went to visit a friend of mine who lived in Little Rock. And he had a bunch of friends who had just gotten their licenses. But my mom had this rule that I couldn't get in the car with them. And so it was a whole thing when we were there where it just added so many layers to doing things and they were all like, "But you're not home. You're in Arkansas. They're not going to know." And I was like, "I'm not allowed to do it. And they're going to know when you crash the car and I get hurt." So I think that tells you a lot about how much of a square I am and also my propensity to see death, if not everywhere, then in like three quarters of places.
Rachel: Yeah. [Laughs] I'm similarly a rule follower and an obeyer of things my mom told me, which I think ultimately the things she told me were reasonable and fair and not riding in a car with anyone who hasn't had their license for more than six months is a totally reasonable ask, I think. I don't know. My brother is sixteen now, and I feel stressed about this every single day. I don't know how parents do it. And the thought of him driving or being in anyone else's car, I'm like, what about not until you're 25. And even then, what if you just didn't...
Sally: Ever?
Rachel: Yeah.
Sally: When I was sixteen, I was like, finally, I mean, I've been an adult and ready to drive a car for three years. Now thinking about it, I'm just like, why are we letting anyone drive a car until the brain is done developing?
Rachel: And even then I think that I'm ready to read a book about how cars are the deadliest weapon and purchase you can ever make. So I think there's a lot more to be unpacked with cars, but in the interest of keeping it moving, I also have some things on my list. Similarly to you, Sally, mine are all things that came from my mom. I think that is the thing we have in common, that our safety origin stories came from moms who were not necessarily overly paranoid, but cautious and confident in their caution, which is something I appreciate.
Sally: Yes. Cautious and confident.
Rachel: Yeah. One was, I don't know how much this was specifically safety, but it was no drinking from glass bottles while you're riding in a car and no opening things with your teeth, which feels related to me because I do think they were ultimately both things about protecting my teeth. And maybe not choking, but I do think it was about teeth first and foremost, which was something my mom was really worried about. She also made me wear a mouthguard when I played sports, which I did not love. But again, she was a hundred percent correct. I think in part because she was just like, "I don't have the money to fix a huge dental accident." And she has quote-unquote 'bad teeth' -- she's had a lot of dental problems, and understands that your teeth are a finite resource and that's not something that you want to mess with. So I still never open things with my teeth and am really cautious with drinking from glass bottles. I can't even imagine a circumstance when I would be drinking from one in a car, but should it come up, I absolutely would not do it.
Sally: Yeah. This was a big one for my mom, is no drinking out of anything while in a moving car that's a glass or a mug. And I think the reason I thought we had that rule was because if the car stopped short you would smack yourself in the head and maybe die. But now that I think about it, I think the teeth thing is probably the more reasonable reason to have that rule. And it's a really good one. To this day, I shan't.
Rachel: [Laughs] So another thing that my mom was paranoid about was trampolines. In the nineties, those big eight foot trampolines started to grow in popularity, and so kids were getting them and I would see one and want one and my mom was immediately like, absolutely not, those are so dangerous, we're not going to own one and you're not even going to get on one. And then when I was seven, a friend of mine, her family got one, so I was going over to her house and I really wanted to go on it. My mom had dropped me off at the house and was still there with me. And I was like, please, please, please let me go on the trampoline. So she said okay, so she was still there. I got on the trampoline. I jumped once, I jumped twice, I jumped a third time, fell, sprained my ankle. And that was it. Three jumps was all it took.
Sally: Was all it took.
Rachel: My mom was right. And it was like, okay, well, an important safety lesson was learned today. Trampolines, not great. My mom, often right. And that's that.
Sally: Yeah. I think one thing that I'm experiencing, I don't know if you are too, is that this just absolutely reinvigorated my confidence in my mom's decisions around what's safe and what's not.
Rachel: Yeah. I completely agree. And if she's worried about something, I'm going to take that really seriously.
Sally: Exactly.
Rachel: So another thing that my mom banned unilaterally was attending a carnival of any sort, like going on carnival rides, because I think she had watched some Dateline segment or something to that effect where they were like, "We're going to show you how these traveling carnivals take all these machines around and set them up in three hours by people who aren't really trained in this and don't really give a fuck." And so she was like, under no circumstances will you ever, ever go to one of these carnivals and ever ride something. And again, I did not miss out for that, and I think she was correct. There's just no need for it. It's just too risky. I don't know what the stats are, but I don't know that I need an episode of Dateline to tell me that avoiding a quickly assembled, spinning ride is a fine idea.
Sally: Also when you go to those carnivals, at least the ones that we had when I was growing up, the rides all look very janky. Nothing about that screams "I passed a safety test" or "I've been inspected." And I remember once as a teenager going to one of these and getting on this ride that, I don't know, you sat in a booth and you held onto this big metal... it was a wheel, not a steering wheel, a stationary wheel. And it would just whip you back and forth. And basically the ride was just this huge heavy piece of metal being pushed repeatedly into my abdomen. [Laughs]
Rachel: Oh, sure. [Laughs]
Sally: This doesn't feel good or fun. And also it's not safe.
Rachel: Right.
Sally: I'm totally on board with your mom. I feel like rides at traveling carnivals, big, big safety thumbs down.
Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. I turned out fine having never gone on them. I didn't miss them. They were not a needed presence in my life.
Sally: The thing I want to know, Rachel, is what your experience is with roller coasters? Because I live in abject fear of them, because they combine speed and height and potential for user error. However, they do seem to be safe by standards that I trust. They are inspected and deemed safe. So anyway, let's talk roller coasters. Where are you at with them? Have you ridden them? Do you ride them?
Rachel: I have ridden them. I have ridden them many times. I actually love roller coasters for the most part, with the caveat that I have not ridden a roller coaster since 2014. So in my experience, I went to amusement parks a lot growing up, loved them, rode everything. Between the ages of like 22 and 30, maybe 22 and 27, didn't go on one and then went on one and was like, "Oh shit, I am a lot older than I was a few years ago." And had a shift of, oh, now I'm the adult in the park versus when I'm a teen in the park. So I had that experience. And then when I went in 2014 I was like, "Okay, I think I have an adult presence at amusement parks that's not the same as it was when I was younger, but it's also not nothing." My biggest problem now is actually I get pretty nauseated, I can easily get motion sick on rides. So I'm very wary of ones that are too jerky or ones that have too many loops. But I would just say on the whole, I grew up going to Cedar Point every summer, it was a huge thing. I genuinely love roller coasters and I don't know how I feel about them at 35, but I would say, yeah, I'd ride some of them provided I had a chance to revisit the safety of them and the inspections. But I think on the whole, I don't know, I didn't really grow up with a lot of horror stories about roller coasters. My girlfriend on the other hand is like, "I swear to God every week on the news where I grew up there was a roller coaster accident." So she's absolutely anti-roller coaster.
Sally: Oh man. Yeah, there's an amusement park near where I grew up that has a reputation for just being really... I think it's a wooden roller coaster or something like that, which is a point of pride for the amusement park, but I think sounds terrifying. There are these roller coasters that are meant for little kids that go twenty miles an hour and the ride lasts less than a minute, and I feel like that's sort of where I'm at roller coaster wise if I was ever to do it. Even going to Coney Island and getting on the Ferris wheel... I don't know, man. There's something that just feels like -- hasn't Coney Island been here for a long time?
Rachel: [Laughs] Right.
Sally: Isn't the parkway pretty old? I don't know.
Rachel: Yeah. I also feel like when it comes to roller coasters, the juice needs to be worth the squeeze. And to me, a Ferris wheel is not it.
Sally: That's fair.
Rachel: If I'm going to get on a roller coaster. I want to go really high, I want to go really fast, I want to feel like I'm on a roller coaster. I'm not going to risk my life for a Ferris wheel.
Sally: See, as you can tell, to me it's all undifferentiated dangerous shit, because it's all in the same category of "I'm scared of it."
Rachel: [Laughs] That's totally fair, yeah. That's completely reasonable. You don't need roller coasters in your life. But amusement parks to me are fun because the people-watching is great, and I just have such a nostalgia for amusement parks that I don't know that I'll ever be able to totally leave behind. Even if rollercoasters themselves are not safe, I think I'd still enjoy a day at an amusement park, just walking around and riding the little baby rides.
Sally: Yeah, totally. I'm all for the baby rides. And I just want to add, I have ridden in a hot air balloon, have you done that?
Rachel: What?
Sally: I know.
Rachel: I would never get in a hot air balloon. [Laughs]
Sally: [Laughs] It's the number one most shocking thing about me if you know me and you know that I have a fear of flying that can only be categorized as a phobia.
Rachel: Even if I didn't know about your fear of flying, I would still be shocked by this. This is the most out of character thing I've ever heard. When did you do this? What were the circumstances?
Sally: Okay, so the circumstances are, I was in... now I can't remember if it's New Mexico or Arizona that's the United States capital of hot air ballooning. I was in New Mexico and I had read that in the southwest, because of air temperature and currents and stuff like that, it's really a popular hot air ballooning site. And I was there for a day and I was like, "You know, let me research this." And I did a lot of research and I found a place that seemed really safe, I think was called Rainbow Riders. I have my certificate, they give you a certificate, I have it in my office.
Rachel: Holy shit. When was this?
Sally: This was in the summer of 2017.
Rachel: Wait, this was since I've known you?
Sally: Yeah.
Rachel: I think this is ringing a bell, and I think I just blocked it out because I thought I hallucinated it.
Sally: Because it doesn't make sense with the rest of my entire being. Yeah. So it was awesome. It was a sunrise hot air balloon ride, and I think the thing that helped it feel not really dangerous to me is that it's really gentle and it's really slow. You're basically floating. And for some reason that helps you forget that you're in a basket that's being held up by a fucking balloon in the air.
Rachel: That's wild. Are you strapped in in any way when you're in, or are you sitting with a seatbelt on, or are you just standing over the edge of a basket?
Sally: Yeah, you're in a, it's a really, really tall basket and there's not a ton of room, because our basket was pretty filled up, and the thing that's really wild is that they can really steer those things. And so he was like, "Oh, we're about to go over the Rio Grande. Let's dip in there and you guys can all have some Rio Grande water on your feet. And so he dipped in and then brought us back up again. Yeah.
Rachel: What?
Sally: It was wild. It was wild.
Rachel: Wow. Wow. I mean, that sounds nice. And if you liked it, I'm like, well then it must be safe and okay to do, but also I'm just still reeling from this news.
Sally: I know. I mean, I almost wonder if I hallucinated it, but I do have a certificate proving I did it.
Rachel: [Laughs] Right. Wow.
Sally: Yeah. And it was when the sun was rising and afterwards they give you champagne and they do this toast and it's really lovely. And I would say, if you are in a place that offers balloon rides and they're real experts and they know what the fuck they're doing, and you research the shit out of the place that's doing it and make sure it's good to go. I was really into it. It was a really beautiful, lovely experience that I don't actually... I feel like the moment that I had the nerve to do it may have passed. So I don't know if it'll happen again.
Rachel: Yeah. It doesn't need to. That's really great. Okay. I'm inspired by that. I don't think I'm ever going to... I mean, in the foreseeable future, I'm not going to have an opportunity for a hot air balloon ride, and I think that's fine. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it if ever that's the case, but I'm happy for you.
Sally: Thank you. It felt like a good bucket list thing.
Rachel: Yeah, definitely.
Sally: So, okay. With that, I feel like now we've totally shared our origin stories, so people understand who we are and where we're coming at safety wise, and I feel like we can transition into home safety.
Rachel: Yeah. Let's do it. All right, Sally, do you want to kick us off with one of your most beloved home safety items?
Sally: Yes I do. My first one is an old standard, everyone should have one. This is not a shocking or surprising life hack, so you don't have to... you can put away your pen and paper, but it's a fire extinguisher, Rachel.
Rachel: Nice. Which actually it's a good one to start with because this was semi inspired by a day a couple of months ago when you just texted me and you were like, "Hey, just wondering, do you have a fire extinguisher?" [Laughs] And that's how safety became top of mind because I was like, "Of course I have a fire extinguisher." And we went from there, and you were like, "Yeah, just checking." So this is where it all began.
Sally: Yeah, this is where it all started. I like to perform random safety checks on my friends, I just like to text and make sure everything is up to code. Andrea and I, we've decided that I'm the safety czar of our household, so I'm in charge of everything safety related, but the fire extinguisher... it's really fun to do a deep dive into fire extinguishers, because there's lots of different kinds and there's fire extinguishers for lots of different kinds of fires, but you can just get an all-purpose home one. And I have a monthly reminder set up in my calendar to check it every month to make sure it hasn't expired, which is something that I think that Wirecutter told me to do when I got a fire extinguisher. So anyway, old standby, definitely make sure you have one, make sure it's accessible, make sure you know how to use it. It's definitely, one of my biggest overall safety tip is, know how to use a thing that you have because you don't want to learn in the midst of a catastrophe.
Rachel: Absolutely. I also would say, you said make sure it's accessible, but I have a tip to add onto that, which is, make sure it is not behind the thing that would be likely to catch on fire. So if you have a fire extinguisher in your kitchen, don't put it right next to the stove that you could potentially not be able to reach it if the stove was on fire. Put it on the opposite side of the room. And that's how I think about, we have these little, they're essentially fire extinguisher cans. They're not a full, you know, the classic red fire extinguisher, but they can be used in smaller moments. So I have those opposite where we tend to put candles so that if we need them, they are directly opposite where we would need them versus right next to them where we can't reach them. So if you have one, make sure you know where it is, that it works, and that you can get to it in the event of a fire.
Sally: That's really smart. And I have to say, it's the fight or flight that happens when I see a flame that's a tiny bit bigger than it should be, it renders me completely unable to do anything that isn't total muscle memory. So having it in the right place and knowing what you're doing with it, that cannot be overstated as a very important safety thing.
Rachel: Are you going to run some drills after this? Or have you already?
Sally: Why am I not doing an evacuation route and putting those posters up in my house so that we know how to get out of the place?
Rachel: It's 2021. It's a new year.
Sally: Let's do it.
Rachel: Let's take it to the next level, yeah. I think that's a good takeaway from this segment. [Laughs]
Sally: Okay. So hit me, Rachel, what's your first home safety thing?
Rachel: Okay, so I would like to recommend a foldable ladder of the step stool height. So I think ours is like three steps. We got this as soon as we moved into this apartment, it was one of our first things that was here waiting for us in the empty apartment when we got here to be able to put things away. I highly recommend having multiple step stools of different sorts in different rooms, because the bottom line is you should not be standing on chairs or countertops if you need to reach certain heights. And there have definitely been times in my life pre-step stool where I've been climbing on something and been like, "This doesn't feel like a good idea, but here I go!"
Sally: [Laughs]
Rachel: So foolish. And I think actually this kind of gets to my bigger philosophy about home safety, is that safety is a form of self care in the most literal sense. You are caring for your body and to climb on an unstable thing or a slippery surface or whatever the case may be is not taking care of yourself. And home injuries can be minor and they can be small, but they're always a little scary. They're always inconvenient and annoying and they can also be... even the ones that aren't necessarily life threatening or even life ruining are probably going to cost you time and money. And particularly now, you don't need to be in an emergency room. So I think my safety instincts have been even higher lately, but just something as small as, yeah, probably climbing on a slippery wobbly kitchen chair to reach a top shelf where you're putting away glasses is not a good idea. So we have a step stool, and also my girlfriend and I always spot each other when one of us is using the step stool just to be extra safe, because it's too easy to get up there and lose your balance or get a little dizzy -- and you've come so far, take it all the way. And if you don't live alone, have somebody there spotting you when you use it.
Sally: I love that. That's really good. Bottom line, do not stand on things that are not intended to be stood upon. And as someone who has eyed my swiveling rolling office chair and been like, "Can I just do that for one second?" And been like, "Eh, probably not." I definitely think the tip of, if you can, having them in different parts of the house is a great one. And I keep actually a little step stool in my office for that reason, because I know that I will have to make a decision, am I going to go downstairs and get the stepladder, or am I going to stand on my swiveling rolling office chair? And I want to give myself everything I need to make the right decision.
Rachel: Completely agree. Yeah. You gotta have those things handy or you just won't do it.
Sally: You just won't do it.
Rachel: Yep.
Sally: So on the ladder tip, actually, the next thing I have is when I was starting to get really into disaster prep, which... I'm not a prepper, but I could be in a slightly different situation.
Rachel: Yeah, same.
Sally: I'm a junior prepper.
Rachel: [Laughs]
Sally: One of the things that I saw on Wirecutter was this ladder, it's made of cloth and it's meant to be attached to a window on a high floor, and then you throw it out the side of the house and you climb out. So as someone who, if I consume any true crime content, I become convinced that the only way I'll survive whoever's coming for me in the night is a ladder going down the side of my house. And also as someone who... the public health messages around fires when I was a kid, I feel like, did you learn, Rachel, about how you touch the door knob, and if hot you don't open the door and you stop drop and roll--
Rachel: You stay low, yeah.
Sally: You stay low, and you wet a towel and you put it under the door or whatever. That instilled in me a really intense fear of being in a fire. So that's-- that ladder, and again... actually I'm probably due to remind myself how to use it, because it does explain on the packaging itself. The packaging is part of the ladder, which is really cool. And we'll put a link to this in the show notes. But, you know, I haven't needed it, but that's also a thing that we had growing up. In the house we had growing up, two of my brothers, their bedroom was in the attic, but they had one extra staircase to climb down, should they need to get out for any reason. And so they had these ladders. And I think it's just one of those things that I feel like I'm probably not going to have to use, but it helps me sleep at night that I have it.
Rachel: Yeah, totally. I actually had one as well in my house in Houston because we had a two storey. And in where the bedrooms were, it was the back of the house. You have to go through a hallway down the stairs at the front, there's no other way to get out. And it just seemed kind of like an obvious one to me. And it was one of those that, yeah, probably never going to need to use it, I never needed to use it, but I think it was probably $50 or less. And it was just one of those things that like, this feels like a fine use of money. I'm going to take this risk on the off chance that we do need it someday, because you just never know.
Sally: You never know. Okay, yeah. So, what you got, Rachel, what's your next thing?
Rachel: Okay, so my next thing is slippers of some sort. I talked about this on our last episode when I was talking about my love for house clogs, but that actually is coming from a love of slippers, which was... a lot of the things I'm going to talk about in this episode are inspired by the book Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson. I've talked about this book a bunch, I've talked about her a bunch, I'm a huge fan of it. But one of the things that she really emphasizes throughout is safety. That's sort of one of the guiding principles of it when she's talking about how to think about your home. One of the purposes of your home is to keep you safe, and part of the purpose of housekeeping is to keep you safe. So one of the things she mentions specifically is that floors are slippery, particularly wooden ones. And if you're wearing socks on them, they're extra slippery. I know that I've certainly been on stocking feet in my home and gone skidding around a corner and been like, "Oh, that was silly." And there's an actual thing for this, they're shoes with treads on the bottom. So I think just remembering to wear slippers in your house. And also an extension of that, and actually this is another one that my mom instilled in me when I was young, is to always wear some kind of shoes when you're moving furniture. She would always get really mad at my grandma because they would be trying to move a bookcase, my grandma would be doing it barefoot and she would be like, "Stop, you need to go put on shoes." And I also feel like when I'm cooking or doing anything really, I like having that extra layer of foot protection, because I don't want to spill something on my foot or, you know, heaven forbid ,drop the scissors as we discussed. I want to have my feet covered. So I think slippers serve a couple purposes and I think they're really worth it.
Sally: Yes. Awesome. One million strong for slippers. I was going to say, I got into slippers for comfort and warmth, but they've come in really handy in times when I've been doing a small house project and I know that flip flops don't provide protection and also make it harder to walk. And I shouldn't be barefoot, but I don't want to put on shoes. A hardy slipper with a tread, that's what you need on your feet when you're doing stuff in the home.
Rachel: I completely agree. All right, what's your next one?
Sally: Okay. So carbon monoxide monitors, which I became kind of obsessed with. I don't remember what I saw or read that made me completely convinced that carbon monoxide was the thing that was going to take me out, but when we moved into our house a few years ago, I was like, "Oh man, it's all on me to make sure we have this." It might've also been all on us in our last apartment we lived in, I don't know, because in an apartment, for some reason, it didn't occur to me to think about this stuff. I was like, oh, there's a super, they're probably making sure we're not dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. So I did a little research, I found a carbon monoxide monitor, and there's one in our bedroom and one in our guest room. And the thing that I read about is that they should be at the level of your head when you're sleeping, because if they're on the ceiling and the carbon monoxide takes a little while to get up there, you could already be breathing it in and ingesting it. So that's a thing that I got. You can get all different kinds of ones. You can get ones that mount on the wall and all this stuff. I was sort of, I couldn't be bothered to do all that. So I just have mine sitting in a very tacky way on my bedside table, but you know, it's who I am and it's how I live. So that's where that's at.
Rachel: That's a good idea. We have carbon monoxide detectors as part of our smoke detectors that are mounted very high up, it's actually a pain. So this is a good tip. I might get an extra one to keep it a lower level, just to be extra safe. I think when I lived in Houston, we had ones that plugged into an outlet, so that was very low. So I might look for one of those and maybe put it in a different room where we don't have either of the smoke detectors or carbon monoxide just to be extra safe.
Sally: Love it. Next up, what you got?
Rachel: My next thing is good lighting in general, but specifically nightlights. This is another one, this is one of my biggest takeaways from Home Comforts. She talks a lot about the importance of good lighting and really makes the point that as people get older, their eyesight gets worse and that combined with bad lighting can lead to falls. And I think she was specifically talking about elderly parents who might be visiting you or staying with you, but also, anyone can fall in their own home. And so I think this is a really important one. She also makes the point that lighting on stairs and in hallways is particularly important. A lot of falls happen at the top and bottom of stairs. And it can often happen when people are unfamiliar with the place they're in. So my first takeaway was, if anyone is visiting me, I need to put nightlights everywhere. But then I was kind of like, I'm just going to leave the nightlights out because why not? Any of us could fall in the middle of the night. So yeah. So we have the little nightlights that you just stick in the plug, they come on automatically when it gets dark. So we have those basically lining the path to the bathroom, which I think is a really good way to do it. And then in Home Comforts, Cheryl Mendelson also says, if you have guests staying with you, make sure that they know where the light switches are in the room they're staying in or in rooms that they'll be in so that if they have to get up in the middle of the night, they can find them. You don't want somebody getting out of bed in the middle of the night, trying to figure out where the lamp or the light switch is or whatever, stumbling and falling in the dark. So I think that's a really good tip. And then also use nightlights liberally, put them in the bathroom, in the hallways. Just remember that anyone who's staying with you, which obviously isn't going to be happening that much now, but in the future, particularly if your parents are staying with you, make sure that everything is well lit and that you think of this as a way to prepare for having guests over. So I think that's a really good tip. And then another one is that she said that glare can make things worse instead of better. So be aware of how you have background lighting and then lighting on for tasks and make sure that it's not creating so much brightness that it's going to make everything else so much darker when you go into a darker area. Try to keep a balance between lamps, overhead lighting, nightlight, so you're not zooming between them too often.
Sally: That's awesome. I really love nightlights. I'm a big nightlight person. And as someone who, I noticed myself recently... do you know that thing, Rachel, that older people do where they're trying to read something and they move it really far away from themselves?
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Sally: I found myself doing that.
Rachel: All right.
Sally: I was, yeah, so that's where I'm at. I was reading, actually, the label of Neosporin and the writing was so small on the package that I did that thing and I moved it away and I was like, "Oh my God, I'm doing the thing." So as someone who at the age of 40-wonderful is starting to notice that things are getting harder to see, I love this. Especially, I mean, in your own home, yes, definitely. And also when you're visiting other places to just be able to find your way around is great. It's also just a great host thing, you know?
Rachel: It is, it's a thoughtful thing to do, so. Nightlights to me are one of the cheapest things you can do to make your home safer, so if you don't have any, highly recommend it.
Sally: Totally.
Rachel: All right, what's your next one, Sally?
Sally: Okay. Well, so actually, speaking of me trying to read the Neosporin package, I just want to give a shout out to keeping a first aid kit and a disaster prep kit also. After Hurricane Sandy, I was like, I need to have stuff in the house in case we lose power and stuff like that. So again, Wirecutter is a great resource for a disaster prep kit. And let me tell you, you can go really hard if you want to really prep or you can go light. Like, this is in case we lose power for a couple of days, and then you can go like, this is in case a tidal wave of zombies take over.
Rachel: Yeah.
Sally: I cast no judgment on anyone who chooses anything on that spectrum.
Rachel: Yeah.
Sally: But first aid kits, everyone get one, know where it is, know what the different things in the first aid kit are for. I want to share a story that I feel so ashamed, as the safety czar, to share this story, but I have to just live in my truth and perhaps my vulnerability will help other people admit their own foibles and feel better about them, which is that I had an allergic reaction to a Band-Aid, Rachel.
Rachel: [Laughs] I didn't know that was-- I mean, obviously you can have an allergic reaction to anything, but this is the first time I've ever heard of somebody having an allergic reaction to a Band-Aid.
Sally: Yeah. It should be illegal that a thing that you're putting on to protect yourself, harms you. But let me just say -- quick content note, I'm going to mention something skin related, which I would say on the spectrum of gore and grossness is relatively low, but maybe fast forward fifteen seconds in case that freaks you out at all -- this allergic reaction made my skin blister. It really hurt. It really hurt really bad. And I was like, something has to go on this, but I don't know what. And so we keep Neosporin around because we have a cat who sometimes scratches us and Neosporin has antibiotics that help prevent infection. And so I put that on it and that wasn't really the right thing. It didn't really help, I think it actually irritated it more. I talked to a dermatologist who was like, you need hydrocortisone or a prescription steroid. So I didn't have hydrocortisone in the house, which is a shocking... it's shocking to me that I put Neosporin on. It's shocking that I didn't have hydrocortisone. I also didn't realize this, that bacitracin and Neosporin... so I've really been educated a lot in the last twenty-four hours. First of all, when I told my mom, she was, I think, appalled that I didn't have hydrocortisone. And I didn't realize that I should have it and it basically goes on anything. If you have redness, swelling, itching, any discomfort on your skin, that's what hydrocortisone is for. Bacitracin and Neosporin are topical antibiotics, so it's if you get a minor abrasion or a wound or whatever, I think also minor burns. But the difference between bacitracin and Neosporin is that Neosporin has some additional substances that do a little bit more in terms of antibiotic properties than bacitracin, but Neosporin also is more likely to cause an allergic reaction because of those substances. And so I think that is also what happened when I put Neosporin on.
Rachel: Ah, I see.
Sally: Yeah, so, and that kind of leads me to my next tip, which I'm just going to bundle these all together if it's okay, because they kind of all go together.
Rachel: Yeah.
Sally: Which is, get medical information from trusted sites. Use the Mayo Clinic, use the FDA, use the CDC. Healthline is a good one, even though that's not a primary source, it's reporting on health stuff. Healthline, I believe, is a trusted one. That's where you should get inforation about, if you're Googling, for example, what the fuck just happened when I took off this Band-Aid and what do I put on it? All of that information should come from sites that you know that you can trust, because I don't know about WebMD. I would say bookmark the ones you trust and only use those as opposed to using Google. And then, another last related first aid thing here is to make sure that you have unexpired everything. So unexpired pain reliever, you know, make sure your Neosporin or your bacitracin, your hydrocortisone, make sure they have not expired. I am not someone who pays a lot of attention to sell by dates on food products. Basically, if something smells good, I'll eat it, even if it technically expired a while ago, but medicines I feel differently about, partially because they can be less effective if they've expired and partially because depending on what it is, there can be a change in the chemical composition that could make them not just less effective, but risky. Although I have to say, when it comes to expired meds, what I'm mostly avoiding is something that is less effective than I want it to be. A way to avoid having a ton of expired stuff is just to buy things in smaller quantities.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Sally: [Laughs] My partner and I laugh about how I'll ask her if she has, you know, do you know where the calamine lotion is or something and she'll come back with something that is in packaging that you can tell by the font that it was made in like the eighties. And that's just too expired, folks. Your calamine lotion from the late eighties is not going to help that itch you have. So make sure that you have everything you need in your first aid kit, but also make sure that it has not expired.
Rachel: Yeah. I think one way to do this is similar to your fire extinguisher calendar reminder, is just pick one day a year, whether it's the first of the year or it's your half birthday or whatever, but that's like, this is safety day when you just go check all of those things that you don't need to be checking every single month. Just a day to go through your first aid kit and check everything all at once to just do a little safety inspection at home. So I think that's really good advice. I also am a huge fan of first aid kits and disaster prep kit. I got mine when I was living in Houston and was like, "So, hurricanes, huh? This is a thing that can happen." And so I still have some of the things that are part of that. We have a crank radio and a solar powered cell phone charger and Purell. I also edited a post that Terri wrote a few years ago for Buzzfeed when I was running Disaster Week, which was a package that I was, perhaps unsurprisingly, very excited to do. And she interviewed an expert in disaster preparedness about, okay, what are the things that you actually need? Because there's a lot of like, once you go down this road, you can get really far down this road. And it's like, once you've accepted that a collapse could happen, you can be talked into buying pretty much anything. So she was like, okay, what are some things that are just basic good ideas? And so she has a list that was really helpful. I bought a bunch of the things on the list. The one thing I didn't buy on the list: N95 masks, which you could just buy on Amazon at the time. I was like, all right, I have the rubber gloves, I have the Purell, I have all these things she recommended, but that one, I was just like, what? I don't know, I just didn't bother with it,and I could not tell you why. So that was a real oversight on my part.
Sally: We were so innocent back then.
Rachel: I know, we really were. But yeah, so I have all those things. Also, my first aid kit came in real handy a couple of weeks ago when I also had a bit of a mishap. I'm going to talk about a cut and blood right now, FYI. So again, maybe give a fifteen or thirty second skip ahead here if you need to. This is so ridiculous. I had a taper candle-related injury, because I was holding up a taper candle to trim the wick off the top, because they come two candles connected by one wick, so you have to cut them. So I was holding it up to cut the wick. The lighting was fairly low where I was doing it, so low lighting was my first mistake. And just wasn't really thinking about this as a thing that could injure me, and cut the wick with the scissors too close to my finger and just cut my finger with really sharp scissors. It hurt so badly. Also, fingers bleed so much, so it was really scary. I washed it immediately, immediately put on Neosporin, was very conscious of all these things, but it was scary. I texted my mom because I just was like, she'll tell me anything I need to know, or if she thinks I should be seriously thinking I might need stitches. And she seemed a little worried. She was like, "Wash it really, really, really well." And then she texted me a second time, "Please." And I was like, okay, well now I'm in mortal danger here. That really freaked me out. So yeah, it was just one of those things. It's finally healing, it's still red, I'm still a bit anxious about it because it hurt so badly. It's fine, but I'm glad we had the first aid kit. I used a lot of Band-Aids, so I just reordered more to refill it. The other thing I will recommend adding to your first aid kit is a can of something called saline wound wash. So it comes in a tall can, you can get it at any drugstore pretty much. I got it a year ago when I got my ears pierced again, the piercer recommended this as a way to clean it. And it just squirts a stream of sterile liquid with enough pressure that it can flush things out. So we used it to clean our earring holes, but it also was really helpful in something like this. I washed my hands really well with soap and water, but having that as a bonus way to clean it was really good. So it's nice to have a can of that in your first aid kit, if you don't yet.
Sally: I didn't know about saline wound wash, and now I'm obsessed with it and I definitely want to get it.
Rachel: Yeah, I'll send you a link. We'll put one in the show notes. Yeah. It's really soothing, really nice to have around.
Sally: I just want to say, fingers and hands bleed so much that it is actually utterly terrifying. I once cut myself with a pair of crafting scissors and it was a whole debacle because I cut myself and I sort of ran through my house trying to find what I needed because I didn't have a first aid kit. Blood everywhere. Then I went outside and got locked out and my roommate came home -- I had my phone on me, so my mom came and picked me up and took me back to her house -- my roommates got home before me and were like, "Uhhhh, what-- is Sally okay?" So anyway, the point is, fingers, bleed an unbelievable amount, and I feel like they're always in the line of fire because you're using them to cut things. So yeah. Yeah. Keep that first aid kit in the places where you're cutting things with your hands. That actually brings me to my next thing, which is having a knife sharpener. I was recently watching my partner saw through a tomato with a dull knife and I was like, "Well, it's only a matter of time before there's a terrible accident."
Rachel: This is how it ends.
Sally: This is how it ends, exactly. And it's so counterintuitive to me because it's like, but a sharp knife is so dangerous. Anyway, we have a knife sharpener that we got for $10 or $12, and you just take your knife and you rub it back and forth in the thing and it sharpens it. And that is a thing that we make sure to do pretty regularly.
Rachel: I need to do that. We've definitely got some knives that either need to be sharpened or just replaced. We've stopped using them, so now it's like, okay, we need to take this to the next level. That actually reminds me of another mini tip that I also got from Home Comforts, which is, if you need to hand somebody a knife, you should not hand it to them. You should set it down on a table, and then they pick it up from the table. Which is like, yeah, that makes total sense, but I would never have thought of that on my own. So that to me is the grownup version of the "always keep your scissors down" is "never just hand somebody a knife."
Sally: Yeah. I mean, the potential for Three Stooges-esque but with blood, fumbling, is pretty high, I feel like.
Rachel: Yeah, I agree.
Sally: Okay, so what's your next thing, Rachel?
Rachel: My next thing is foodborne illnesses and food temperature. This is a huge topic and way too complicated to get into here, so I'm going to just give you some top level things, but also say: foodborne illness is a big thing that we might not be thinking about when it comes to home safety, but that's a big oversight if you're not thinking about it, and it's where a lot of things can go really wrong. So a couple of tips that I really keep in mind from Home Comforts. The first is to keep your kitchen dry. Mendelson writes that: "Even a clean but wet countertop can be a home to millions of bacteria, but you can create a staggeringly reduced bacterial count simply by drying it off and keeping it dry for a couple of hours. The simplest and most important rule of food safety is keep your kitchen clean and dry." So that's a really good one. I also through reading this book have taken away that standing water anywhere is slippery, so if you spill water on the floor, it's the kind of thing I used to be like, "Oh, it'll dry." But now I'm like, no, I have to actually dry that up because I don't want to step in it and slip later. So treat water as a danger zone. Also don't stand on a wet floor and blow dry your hair. Really see water as, as an opportunity for things to go really wrong. But at a really basic level, just wipe your counters down after you clean them.
Sally: That's really smart. I kind of forget that water gives life and water takes life away. [Laughs]
Rachel: Sure does, yeah. The other thing that she talks about is keeping hot foods hot and cold foods cold, which I think we all know, but then sometimes can be really bad about. I also personally have been bad about it because I like food that is kind of room temperature, which is not a great habit. So hot foods need to be 140 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, and cold foods should be 40 degrees Fahrenheit or lower. The thing to keep in mind is that if something is cooling from hot to cold, when it's less than 140 degrees but not down to 35 degrees yet, that's the danger zone and you don't want it to spend too much time there. So if you have something like a hot soup that you have taken off the stove and you need to put it in the fridge, put it in the fridge while it's still hot, don't let it sit down and cool off and then put it in the fridge. You are putting yourself at risk by doing that because it's going to spend more time in that middle zone, you need to get it cooled immediately. And she suggests if you're worried about it, for whatever reason, put it into smaller containers. So it's in smaller batches, you can even put it in the freezer for a little bit to cool it faster, but make sure you're cooling things as fast as they can. Don't let them cool slowly. You want to get them from hot to cold and not waste any time in between there.
Sally: Damn, I didn't know that. That's really smart. I'm forever letting stuff cool off before putting it into the fridge.
Rachel: Yeah, I think a lot of people... I think people think it's safer because it's like, "Oh, but it's hot, what if it explodes in my fridge?" And it's just like, I don't think that's really the thing, and the more likely thing that's going to happen to you is that it's gonna get pathogens in it because you're just letting it chill there.
Sally: Totally. I always think it's going to bring down the temperature in the fridge, but that doesn't seem realistic.
Rachel: It doesn't. I think you'd have to have a really small fridge, a really big terreen of steaming soup for that to happen.
Sally: That's true, yeah.
Rachel: I think that's specifically what she said, put it into smaller batches to keep that from happening as badly. Don't do it for that. She specifically calls that out in the text, don't do it for that reason.
Sally: That's really smart.
Rachel: Yeah. All right, what have you got next?
Sally: Okay. So next up is also related to a recent, very scary mishap that happened with our cat Miles, who is okay -- but I didn't know that lilies, any part of a lily, if a cat ingests, if they eat a little bit of a petal or ingest pollen or even sip the water that a lily is in, cats are extraordinarily sensitive to lily matter, and it can actually cause kidney failure and death within three days. Which is terrifying, and I just feel like if you ever get a cat, when they give you the cat, they should be like, "By the way, don't have lilies in your house." Because this is not a thing I knew. I was actually, I was talking to my friend Zara and I was like, "I have to send you a picture of Miles. He looks so cute because he has like pollen all over him." And she was like, "What kind of pollen?" And I was like, "Oh, it's from this lily." And Zara was like, "Oh, those are really dangerous to cats, you have to take him to the vet." And I was like, "All right, we'll just keep an eye on him." And she's like, "No, no, no, no, no. Like you have to, it's an emergency." Indeed listeners, it was a huge emergency. We rushed him to the emergency room. We are very fortunate that we live ten minutes away from the University of Pennsylvania School of veterinary Medicine, and they have a full service hospital for animals. So at a certain point, Miles was transferred to the internal medicine floor, which there's something about that that I think is really funny when it's animals, but he got really, really good care. They put him on IV fluids and there's a really good study about lily toxicity in cats and I'll link it in the show notes, but it basically explains that if the cat doesn't get on fluids to flush their system out within eighteen hours of ingestion, that's when they have a really bad prognosis of kidney failure and potentially death. He's totally okay, he is going to have some chronic kidney disease as a result. And by the way, all he did was he stuck his little head in the lily to sniff it, he got pollen on his face, and then he kind of spread it around when he was grooming himself. So it's not like he went to town on a lily. We looked at the lily after -- he hadn't even bitten through a petal or anything like that. So, pet safety. Know what is toxic and harmful to your pets, because it's not always intuitive. And after this I did some research and was completely horrified, and we got rid of an aloe plant because aloe is one of the things that's toxic. There's also, if you're someone who uses diffusers with different essential oils in them, those can be neurotoxins to various pets. So if you have a pet at home, just do some research on sites that you can trust and see what is and isn't toxic and also find out how toxic something is. Because what I read is that like, if a dog eats a lily, they'll get some GI upset. So maybe that's not enough for you to never have lilies in your house if you have a dog, but because they're potentially lethal to cats, I'm just never letting lilies darken my doorstep ever again, they shall not cross this threshold.
Rachel: I feel like you should be told this when you get a cat, and also anyone selling lilies should be... it should have a tag on it, you know, like the Surgeon General's warning of "This can cause kidney failure in cats." Because if people don't know, they just have no idea and it seems very easy to not know about this.
Sally: Yeah. And in fact, everyone I've mentioned this to who has cats didn't know.
Rachel: That's terrifying.
Sally: Yeah. And you know, someone sent us this really beautiful bouquet that just happened to have two lilies in it, and I also feel like it's so rough to be that person too. So yeah, if you're going on 1-800-FLOWERS and you're picking a bouquet with lilies, I definitely think there should be a pop-up that's like, "This will kill your friend's cat."
Rachel: Yeah. I think that's... yeah.
Sally: So, cat safety people, get into it. Don't neglect it. And don't assume also that any substance is just going to cause GI upset, not to get really dark. Rachel, what is your next thing?
Rachel: Well, I want to just add something to what you just said, which is, I think it's a really good idea to store important numbers in your phone in good times. So I have the number of the closest emergency vet in my phone and I have the address so that if ever something happens, I'm not stuck looking for that. Or if I don't have my phone nearby... obviously now if I don't have my phone nearby, I'm still going to be in trouble. But if I didn't have service or something, to be able to Google where it was, you don't want to be dealing with that if you're in an emergency scenario. So put your vet's number in your phone and emergency vet, make sure you change it when you move -- you might need a different one, so be conscious of that. If you need to put poison control or other services like that in your phone, just think about, have a few minutes of worst case scenario stuff and update your phone contacts accordingly.
Sally: Yeah. And actually, that's a thing I can tag on to, because the other night it started raining inside our living room.
Rachel: Oh, classic, okay.
Sally: Yeah, which was fun. We had a plumbing emergency, and this is also just a profoundly bad time to need people to come into your house. But you know, like I was saying, when that fight or flight kicks in, like when it is truly raining in your living room and it's the middle of a pandemic and there's a coup happening in your nation's Capitol, it's a profoundly bad time to sit down and do some research and figure out if there's a trusted emergency plumber near you and do they have good reviews and what are their rates and stuff like that. So I just want to say plus one for having a bunch of emergency numbers in your phone and I don't know, tacked up on your refrigerator.
Rachel: Yeah, agree. So the other thing I was going to mention is just some small things that can have a big impact. So one of the newest additions to our home safety kit is safety goggles, which we got because we were doing some drilling into the wall with a particularly big drill, but I don't actually think you should wait until you're drilling with a big drill, but I think you should just get them now because they are very inexpensive, good to have. We also now have them for doing bleach chores, which... you don't have to wear goggles when you're cleaning with bleach or doing stuff with bleach, but it certainly doesn't hurt. And it's one of those things that might feel a little silly, but the alternative of getting a chemical in your eye is not great. So it's just a really good thing to have that you will have for a long time, so it's worth buying. We also, now that we have masks around, we've been using them occasionally when we're cleaning and we're cleaning with a chemical that is particularly noxious and that is... you know, our bathroom is pretty small, it very quickly gets filled with the smell of a tub cleaner. So throwing a mask on and turning on an air purifier when we're done and keeping the fan going. Open windows when you're cleaning with chemicals, it really is easy to get light headed. It is easy to not recognize what products have ammonia in them versus which have bleach in them. I have an article I can link to about just general bleach safety, but just be conscious of toxic fumes. And it doesn't hurt to put one of your cloth masks on when you're cleaning. And then also wear gloves if you have them, like I have dish gloves, have a pair that you just use for cleaning your bathroom or whatever. You've got to protect your skin from these chemicals. It's very easy to get, not necessarily full on burns, but sort of nasty rashes and things like that, that again are going to hurt, they're going to take time and attention and energy and money to fix. And it's very solvable. So take all those little chores seriously too, and just make sure you're being really safe when you're doing those.
Sally: Yeah. And I think that's another really good instance of, this actually ties onto my next one, which is just listening to your gut. And I think listening to your gut about if you're cleaning with something that is meant to remove grease or stubborn stains, think about what chemicals need to be in that for that to be accomplished. It's probably not a good idea for that to be coming into a lot of contact with your lungs and your skin and stuff like that. So I think those are really, really good tips. And I just want to tack it onto my next one which is, we talked about when we were talking about moms, but listening to your gut and if something feels off or weird, or you notice a funny smell, or I don't know, just something is creeping you out. And the example I can give is that when we first moved into our house, the first time we used the oven, there was a really bad chemical smell that filled the house, but we couldn't really figure out where it was coming from. I can't remember the circumstances now and why we didn't actually connect it to the oven, but it just didn't smell right.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Sally: And we called our neighbors who, and actually this is my last one, so I'm just going to roll these all together. My next safety tip is, know your neighbors. First of all, it's just a nice thing to do, is to know the people that you share a community with. But also, I think it really helps when you have some sort of urgent issue come up or some sort of emergency, because in this case, we smelled this really weird smell and we were new homeowners and we didn't know what was going on. And our neighbor Katie came over and she sniffed around and was like, "Oh, did you recently use your appliances for the first time?" And we were like, "Yeah." And she's like, "Yeah, this is just whatever thing they use when they're manufacturing it, it's burning off. Just open the windows and it'll go away. And if it doesn't, then you can pursue some other thing." And that was just hugely helpful. I think sometimes when you perceive something going wrong, I think a lot of us have this instinct to be like, it's probably nothing. And, you know, statistically, it probably is, but occasionally it's not nothing. And I think it's really important to just, if there's a little bit of a feeling in your gut that something is off, follow through with that instinct and investigate it, take the time to see what's going on. And, you know, know your neighbors because maybe they can help you with stuff. And then also you can help them with stuff. So those are my two last things rolled up into one.
Rachel: Those are great tips. I think that on that note, again, if you're having the moment where you think, "This doesn't feel safe," stop what you're doing, because it's too easy to think that and then do it anyway. So whether you sit there and think, "Is this safe? I don't know if it's safe." Don't have that internal conversation as you stand on the wobbly chair, get off the chair. Just get off the chair and think about it. You don't need to figure this out while you're still sort of in harm's way. If you're asking yourself, "Is this safe," that's something that deserves a little bit more follow through, ideally from a definitely safe place. So just don't worry about looking stupid or overreacting or being embarrassed. It's really okay. Especially if there's a gas smell or a weird smell. I was just reading an article the other day in The Times about people losing their sense of taste and smell because of COVID, and it specifically talks about how the sense of smell is an acutely developed one to keep humans out of danger. So if something smells weird or off, pay attention to that and get more information, and maybe don't continue. Turn off the thing that's on, whatever, get away from the thing that smells weird. Trust your sense of smell.
Sally: Yes. That is a great tip. And it's also, I think this reminds me of times that I've been doing something that's not safe and been like, "But it's just going to be really quick, so I'm not going to be doing this unsafe thing for that long," but if you're cutting a tomato with a dull knife or whatever, it's not like it takes using the knife for an hour to get a cut. It takes a second.
Rachel: Right.
Sally: So, you know, don't think that because something is happening quickly, or if you smell something, even if it was fleeting, take the time to check it out.
Rachel: Yeah, I agree. So I have a couple more that I'm just going to go through real quickly, because there's not much to say except do this. And that is wear your seatbelt even when you are riding in an Uber or a cab. I am genuinely shocked when people don't do this, but I also know how easy it is to think that a car you're not driving that is a taxi of some sort is somehow exempt from seatbelt rules. That is not true, it is not worth the risk. The statistics on how much more at risk you are when not wearing a seatbelt are wild. A couple of years ago I was on a trip with a couple of friends, and one of the friends got into the car with myself and the friend who was driving in the front seat and didn't put a seatbelt on right away. And she was like, "Hey, put your seatbelt on." He was like, "No, I'm good." And we were both just like, "What the fuck is wrong with you? Wh-- what?" It was so shocking to find out that he was so casual about seatbelt wearing. And then he got weirdly defensive about it, and we were just like, "Yeah, sorry, whatever. Put your seatbelt on. Why are we having this conversation at all?" It was so bizarre. So always, always, always wear your seatbelt. And if you are riding a bike or a skateboard or you're rollerblading or whatever the case may be, wear a helmet. This is a non-negotiable one. Again, traumatic brain injury is no joke. You're not probably that good at skateboarding or riding a bike, but even if you are, there are cars that open their doors and things like that. It's just not worth the risk. Please wear a helmet. Just, don't take the chance.
Sally: Yeah. I've seen a lot of people skateboarding and no one's good at it. I've never seen anyone -- I've seen a lot of people try tricks and I've never seen anyone land them, except for in movies and TV shows. So wear a helmet. Yeah. And just to tack on to our little vehicular safety thing, if you are going... first of all, I don't think you should be wearing headphones at all if you're riding a bike or on any kind of moving conveyance. If you're running or even walking, make sure your headphones aren't canceling out noise, make sure they're not super loud. You really do need to be able to hear environmental noise. You also need to be able to hear if there are creepy people coming up on you, which is the thing I think about a lot when I'm out alone at night. And I used to be a runner, and let me tell you something. Priuses? Very quiet. If you take the Prius or other hybrid car and your earbuds in... I don't even really listen to music when I run, I listen to podcasts. But even that, you are not going to hear that hybrid car. That beautifully eco-friendly vehicle could end your life as it saves our planet's. So, yeah, just a couple, I would say non-negotiable vehicular and outside of your home tips.
Rachel: Yeah. Be safe. Again, it's one of those things that if you're wondering, ah, it kind of feels like everything's muted right now and I can't hear the world -- listen to your gut, take out one of your earbuds or AirPods, turn your music down, whatever the case may be. Just don't take any chances, it's not worth it. I always feel like I'm... particularly right now in a pandemic I'm constantly asking myself, "Is this thing that I want to do worth it?" And the answer is always no and so I don't do anything, but I think also just remembering to apply that to other aspects of your life and, you know, is it worth a serious injury or worse because you wanted to listen to that song at top volume? Probably not. So just be safe, be mindful of that stuff.
Sally: Yes, definitely. Now that we've talked through all of the things that could potentially harm you in serious ways, let's transition to a nice thing to end on.
Rachel: That sounds great. So my nice thing to end on is knitting, which I have been doing for a couple of weeks now. I have completed my first hat and I'm now practicing, just practicing different sort of techniques and stitches as I wait for more supplies to arrive. And I will very soon be starting the novice sweater, which is an ambitious second project, but my girlfriend is basically a week ahead of me on this. She learned to knit first. So now she has moved on to this sweater and is making incredible progress. I think she is going to be a better knitter than I am at the end of the day, but it is giving me faith that it can be done. So I have used our friend Alanna Okun's book Knit a Hat, which I will link to. It's great. You need to couple it most likely with some YouTube videos to really fully get it, but it's very doable to teach yourself using this. And she covers all of the, sort of anything you could need to know about buying yarn and needles and all these things in a really voicey and really helpful way. So I know I'm not the first person to get into knitting, but just wanted to say that knitting has been really lovely and it's a new year and time for a new hobby. So this is a good one.
Sally: I love that. And I just want to say that the time that elapsed between you taking up the hobby of knitting and sending me a picture of a finished hat was short, so.
Rachel: It's pretty remarkable. It's got a steep learning curve, but kind of once you get through that, you're, you're good. And then you can learn little new things, and you will have to along the way, but it's that first bit that once you get through that, you're in good shape.
Sally: That's awesome. What a cool new hobby.
Rachel: Yeah.
Sally: My nice thing to end on is just, thank a vet today. A veterinary medicine doctor is what I mean. So, you know, we had this experience with our cat Miles and these vets took such amazing care of him and cared so much and were so patient, answered all of our questions. And I think before I had Miles, I knew what it meant to love a pet and be sad when they died, but I didn't know I could love another being the way I love Miles. It's just a different thing. And the vets, they get that, because that's how they feel about pets. And so they understand how much you love your pet and how worried you are. And we just had this amazing team of vets and veterinary students taking care of him, and they were just so, so, so lovely. And I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I've had some experiences recently with doctors, human doctors, that have been really difficult and really discouraging and kind of traumatizing. And I was talking again to my friend Zara, who you will understand... she's a life coach for me. My friends are like my life coaches. I think we should all have friends that we can think of as our life coaches. Because you're another one of my life coaches. But anyway, I was telling her about how amazing this vet was and like how she was just taking such good care of Miles and being so wonderful to us. And she was like, "You should totally let them know or write a review or something, because being a vet is really hard. And it's just rough, and they would probably love to hear that." And I was like, "Oh man. Okay, cool." And I was trying to figure out how I could write a review and stuff like that. And I was like, I'm fucking writing to the Dean of the Penn School of Veterinary Medicine, but also Andrea, my partner, is a Baker and she baked this really beautiful chocolate peppermint Bundt cake with crushed candy canes on it. And we brought it down and we dropped it off for the vet and the team that she worked with to take care of Miles. And our vet texted us, and she wrote this really, really lovely text that was like, you know, "We see sick animals all the time. And a lot of the cases end really sadly, and this was really nice, this means a lot, you made a lot of people feel better and feel fuller than we did when our shift started. So thank you." It was just so lovely. We were so moved by the way they cared for Miles, and then also how grateful she was when we expressed our gratitude. And so thank a vet, review a vet, and if you don't have a pet and so you don't have a vet to thank, thank a doctor who took really good care of you. I've also had some really, really amazing doctor interactions lately. It's been a really full of doctors time period for me. And I've had some doctors take exceptional care of me. And so if you have -- or a nurse, I've had amazing nurses taking care of me -- any sort of, or a tech, anyone who in your time of feeling scared or sad, sees you and sees your humanity, and you're scaredness, and takes a little bit of extra time to care for you. Just thank them. Just, yeah. Show your gratitude to them. And that is my nice thing to end on.
Rachel: That is a great thing to end on.
Sally: Well, we did it, Rachel. This is our jumbo episode. I think we should have known this would be a long one, because we were talking about safety.
Rachel: Yeah. I think we honestly could have talked for another twenty minutes about safety too, given a little more latitude, but I think we also got to keep it tight. So thanks for listening to this episode of Oh I Like That. Please rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts.
Sally: And follow us on Twitter @ohilikethatpod, and you can email us at ohilikethatpod@gmail.com.
Rachel: You can also follow either of us on Twitter. I am @the_rewm and Sally is @sallyt.
Sally: Oh I Like That is produced by Rachel and Sally and edited by Lucas. Amber Seger, who is @rocketorca on social media, designed our logo.