Safety in our homes are super important. So I am going to cover 10 things you can buy and do your self to help stay safer at home.
We cover prevention of somethings, and resolution of the situation if possible. Plus we go over a couple of ways to make life a bit easier when you are trying to figure things out.
Finally, we hit on a couple of things you should do right now if you haven’t already.
Links
- Smoke Detectors / Carbon Monoxide
- Flashlights – Mag lights
- First Aid Kit
- Fire Extinguishers
- Nightlock
- Door Armor MAX
Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the 21st episode of the Buddy Podcast. I’m your host, Buddy Lindsey. And today we’re going to talk about 10 things that can help with your safety at home. But before that, if you haven’t visited the website, you can visit at buddiy.net. And please feel free to subscribe to the email newsletter so that you know when new stuff is released. Follow me on Instagram at instagram.com/buddylindseyjr to get daily updates of everything that I do. And occasionally I do a story here and there. And finally, I post all the videos to YouTube at youtube.com. Just search for buddy@buddiy, or visit the website and click on the link there. Also, please feel free to subscribe there so you know when new content is released. And with that, let’s jump into the first segment of the podcast and that is what’s going on around here.
Well, it’s been an okay week. The biggest thing I’ve jumped into this week is researching dust collection and man has it been nuts. So I got started in researching dust collection whenever I started using my new table saw this week to really work on a table for The Weekend Woodworker course. And it’s been great. I really like the tube and funnel system inside of the soft stop to get the dust out.
Unfortunately, it’s all piling up outside, which is great. I can vacuum it up, but at the end of the day, I’d like better dust collection to be able to get all of the stuff in one place and just keep the place a little bit cleaner. So I’m like, you know what, I’m going to research doing some dust collection. I’ve seen people do these modified Harbor Freight dust collectors, and do a really good job at keeping the area clean.
So I started researching and I fell into a website that was basically the foremost expert in dust and chip collection. And it all went haywire from there and researching everything like it is a rabbit hole beyond all rabbit holes and super interesting. And I’m going to talk about that hopefully next week, or the week after that, get into a lot of the information about dust collection and staying not only safe, but keeping your area clean. I did not realize that with bad dust collection, it can make your shop less safe from a respiratory perspective, but I’ll get more into that in next week’s episode.
But other than that, really this week has been just working on the table to get the Sonoma table done and get that… See I modified it for the girls, and I’ve been doing really good on that. That should actually be finished this week. And I can move on to some bookshelves, which I really need out here in my office and we also need in the house. So I’m really excited for that, because once I get that done, I can move on to the final project of The Weekend Woodworker course, and I’m planning on using some walnut for that. And I really like the look of Walnut in a lot of projects, and I’m excited to finally get there. But it’s been a little slow, little progress but we’ll get there. We’ll see.
So on that note, let’s jump into the main segment of the day and that’s 10 things to help you stay safe around your house. I’m actually going to break this into five segments. There are notification, research, resolution, prevention and last resort. So these 10 things total across all of them. And the first one is notification, is understanding when something has gone wrong.
One of the main ones, and I’m not really going to get into details. If you have an alarm system, this can be really expensive, so I’m not really going to add it to this list for prevention. Because, I recommend an alarm system, but that’s not feasible for everyone. So we’re going to move on. The main one is smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. These are usually fairly low-cost and just something you can pop around your house and you’re done. It’s basically 30 minutes of work if you get a whole bunch of them and put one in every room and you’re done. And it’ll beep at you every time there’s a notification that you need to change out the battery.
I’m going to have a link in my website at buddiy.net. Search for episode 21. To the ones that I use, everything on this list today I’ll have links. They’re all things that I personally use, or have used in the past and I recommend them. If I don’t have a link next to it, then I haven’t found something that I like, or it’s cheaper to buy at a Walmart, or something like that. Or I don’t have something I specifically recommend, because it’s a case by case basis. But with carbon monoxide and smoke detector combination, there’s a really good one it’s 30 bucks, 32 bucks on Amazon. And I recommend just getting a couple every now and then. If you don’t have any stop what you’re doing right now and go by at least one to put in the main living space of your house to at least get started, that’s at least better than nothing.
There’s actually going to be a couple of things today that I recommend you just stop what you’re doing and go buy them now, at least get them on order and coming to you. But part of the reason I’m getting into this whole thing today on the safety is when I was researching the dust collection, it started getting me thinking broader on safety around not only shop, but the house as well. And what are a few of the things that I have been putting off that I really need to get and get into shape?
Fortunately, smoke detectors haven’t been that bad. It’s the carbon monoxide detectors. I need to swap out a few of the smoke detectors that we have for some smoke and carbon monoxide combination detectors. I have a couple, I just need some more. So that’s definitely something I totally recommend, since carbon monoxide is odorless and you can basically go to sleep one night and never wake up. Now, that’s a great way to die, but not when you’re 30 years old, I’d rather do that at 120, just saying. Alarm system and smoke detectors are great for alerting, for understanding what’s going on, and being able to do something about.
The next thing you going to want to do is if you get alerted to something, you’re to want to research. And when I say research, you’re going to start looking and trying to figure out what’s going on. The first thing I recommend in that case is to say safe, especially at night, if you’re groggy and you’re asleep, you’re just like, “I don’t know what was going on.” And so you get up and you’re going to be moving through your house. The best thing that I’ve invested in, and I don’t have a recommendation because Walmart has… Their great, is to get some motion sensor nightlights that you just put in all of your outlets, in your walking path, especially down hallways. That way, as you’re walking by, they pop on and they pop off. So you don’t have to keep turning them on and turning them off. They just turn on when you need them. And they turn off when you don’t and they keep everything lit up. And you’re not going to trip over stuff if there’s something in the way.
Plus if something’s in your house that’s not supposed to be, you’re more likely to see it, or they’re going to walk by and it’s going to illuminate them before they see you, or it. Sometimes animals get into houses, just going to say. Anyways, so I really recommend motion nightlights and just put them all over your house. You’re not going to be sorry you did, especially in bathrooms and kitchen areas, they’re great.
The next thing on the research front is let’s say something’s going on outside. There’s a dog barking next door and just will not shut up and that’s not normal, or your dog is barking and you’re going to want to go outside and take a look around, I recommend getting some Maglite’s some LED, 3 D Cell Maglite’s. I don’t remember if they come with clips to put on the wall, but I recommend every exterior door in your house, put one of these flashlights. So you just are heading out the door and you just grab it off and walk out the door. And you have this super bright light that you can shine around, super useful. And I don’t know how many times that I’ve used it and it’s come in handy trying to figure things out. Especially when there’s a skunk outside and he’s really far away and you shine it in their face and they turn around and run away. That’s super useful.
Maglite’s are amazing. I’ve loved them and they’re really rigid, and you can drop them. You can abuse the crap out of them and they just stay ongoing. I definitely recommend a Maglite at every exterior door. I didn’t think that it would be useful as I thought it would be. It’s actually really funny when it comes to flashlights, because I carry a flashlight with me every day, a little pen light. And I used to think people were weird that carried a flashlight with them everywhere. But one day I was like, “Man, there’s so many people that carry a flashlight with them every day they’re there might be something to it.” So I bought one and I use that thing more than I know what to do with. I feel incredibly dumb for wondering why people carried a flashlight with them everywhere. I use the things so much. I’m like, “How did I ever get by without a flashlight?”
Flashlights are amazing. Especially the Maglite’s that are super bright. They can help you not only find stuff outside, but investigate stuff and if you need to beat something, you have a flashlight with you. That’s it on the research section. Really, it’s more about just lighting so you can get a visual understanding of what’s going on. If you want to upgrade and you’re going to do something like night vision cameras, that’s cool. That’s not something that I can really do a recommendation on, because I have my particular set of needs and my particular set of qualifications. And it’s totally different than most other people, so I’m not even going to go there.
Finally, we’re going to get into resolution. Most of the time the resolution is if there’s an intruder, that’s a whole ball of wax that I’m not really going to get into. And for the moment, if it’s a fire, then the first thing you need to do is get out. And that’s where you need a plan. You need to make up a plan. But if it’s a small fire or something, and this is actually something, when I was growing up, we had a small, teeny little fire pop up, and it was underneath our dryer and we had a fire extinguisher. And I ran over, grabbed it, sprayed, put it out, and that was it. That was the end of it. If we didn’t have a fire extinguisher, in all honesty, by the time I would have been able to get to water, or whatever, the fire probably would’ve gotten a lot worse and we would not have had that house anymore.
Fortunately, we had the fire extinguisher in a known place and I could get to it really, really, really fast. And it was regularly checked to make sure that it was charged. So I totally recommend fire extinguishers. But this is another one of those, if you don’t have any fire extinguishers in your house, stop right now, hit my website, click on that link and go buy some. Buy that four-pack, it’s 80 bucks. And you’ll be glad you did, because now you have fire extinguishers and you’re good to go.
The next one for resolving an issue, is in case you get injured. An injury could just be cut yourself on a table saw, or you just get a splinter, or cut yourself with a knife, all kinds of stuff. Kids skins their knees, whatever. And at this point you need some first aid stuff. And I highly recommend buying a 200 pack, or a hundred pack, or 300 pack, whatever of Band-Aid’s, big pack of Band-Aid’s off of Amazon, they’re super cheap. And going with that, that’ll take care of, I would say 90% of the problems that you’re going to run into when it comes to cuts and scrapes. And you’re going to be fine.
The second thing I recommend is getting gauze and I recommend the square gauze pads and some gauze tape I have links to all of this. And a that comes in really useful for if I get a really big scratch, or really big cut on something and I need to wrap it up and I don’t want to waste 10 Band-Aids trying cover that, but it’s not that bad. That’s where I find gauze and tape to come in really, really handy. Especially if I just need to hurry up and put it over a cut, like when you cut your finger on a table saw. That way, you’re not jamming something in there that doesn’t need to go in there. It’s sterile. And it helps to clot up the cut.
So outside of that, most stuff you don’t necessarily need, because in this day and age, you usually can get to an emergency room if it’s much worse, or you can call 911, or something like that. If you’re out in the woods or something, I have a totally different recommendations set for that. But for modern day to day, for most people, just some gauze and some Band-Aid’s will get you going just fine.
On that note, however, I also recommend, and I have a link, to getting a portable first aid kit that you can just throw in your bag. I carry a first aid kit, everywhere that I go. It mostly has gauze and Band-Aid’s in it, but I have a couple other minor things in there. And just carry that with you everywhere you go. And now you always have something available, because it’s amazing. You don’t necessarily get cuts all that often, but other people around you seem to get cuts. And they’re like, “What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?” And so you can just go grab a Band-Aid real fast, get a little alcohol swap thing, wipe it off, put a Band-Aid on it. Boom, they’re ready to go. And now you’re a hero, especially to a little child that is like, “I don’t know what to do.” Anyway, so definitely recommend carrying around a first aid kit as well, super effective. And it just makes life a lot easier.
So let’s jump into preventative things that you can do around your house to keep you safe. The first one is to get a motion sensor light. They have several brands on Amazon. I have not tried any longterm yet, so I don’t know what to recommend. I just bought a set, a four pack of LED rechargeable solar lights that are supposed to be basically spotlights that come on, a motion sensor at night. And they recharge from the sun during the day. It’s supposed to be 23 LED lights and give out an enormous amount of light whenever the motion hits, or you can set them on for longterm display. So I have those on order. They should be coming in this week and I can put them up and later I can report what I think of them.
But definitely get some sort of light detection things so that it brights up the area that somebody is in, as you move around, or somebody else, or something moves around. Because that’s also nice is you can watch what’s going on in your property as people, or things are moving around. Or, when you’re just walking out to the back of your yard, it can come on and it can give you a little bit of light of where you’re going. You don’t necessarily need to carry around the flashlight as much. So definitely recommend some spotlights that are motion activate., Check Amazon, find some good reviewed ones and give it a shot. And I’ll let you know what I think of the ones that I’ve ordered.
The next thing I recommend, and this is not only a good security thing to have for your house, but also a good convenience thing to have. And that is to get a key pad deadbolt for basically all your outside doors that you can have them on. Super nice, because you can put in a number in there, then your kids can get in the house without a key, relatives can get in the house without a key. You can give them their own numbers and so you can change it on them if you want to. That way, there’s less keys that you have to have floating around and you can change the numbers as well.
The feature that I love the absolute most is the automatic lock system that a lot of them have, so that after about 30 seconds, the deadbolt just locks. And then that way you don’t have to necessarily worry about, “Did I lock the house? Did somebody else like the house? What’s going on?” And in some cases, depending on the ones you get, you can actually lock it from your phone. So there’s a lot of really cool things about having the key padlock, but the one that I find the most, to add that extra security so that you don’t have to think about it as much is the automatic locking of the deadbolt. Totally recommend getting those. I got a cheap one for about 60 bucks at Lowe’s. It suits our needs. And when you’re changing out a bunch of the deadbolts, it’s really affordable, and then we can upgrade later, as we need, or want to. So definitely check out key pad deadbolts.
So the next thing is, we’re getting into more of the safety from an outside influence in your house. Somebody might want to break into your house. This is something that you can get, and it’s not intrusive at all, but it can add extra safety to your house. And specifically to your door, this one and the next one relate to your door. And it’s called Door Armor. And it’s not as crazy as it sounds. I have a link on the website, specifically to what I’m talking about. But it’s a five piece metal set that you go and you put on your door. You put it on your door jams, you put it around the parts where you actually have a dead bolt and you have the mechanism on the door handle itself. And you put it around the hinges, or on the hinges as well.
And what this does is it reinforces all of those components by putting in more screws into the wall. And so it’s harder for somebody to just beat down the door for some reason. So let’s say somebody really wants to try to get in the door and they’re banging on the door, trying to like bust through it. This is going to reinforce that structure around the door and making it a lot harder to even get in. I’m not going to say prevent them from getting in, because the idea behind security is you’re not going to prevent someone, but you’re going to make sure it takes as long as possible. And it’s going to make sure you’re alerted sooner that something is going on. So I recommend this for sure, to add that extra safety to your door jams themselves on the outside doors.
The next one is called a Nightlock. It’s a little bit of a different thing, but definitely if you combine it with the previous thing, I don’t know that somebody is going to make it through your door, unless they’re chopping a hole in the door. And that is, you have this little plate that you put on the ground. And then at night, before you go to bed, you just slide this little thing and the plate right up against the door. And then that way there is no movement for the door to make from the outside. If you need to leave, you just slide it out, open the door and you’re good to go. And this is super strong, super durable. You bolt it into the ground. It’s not very obtrusive at all. And now it prevents somebody from just breaking into your house, but it doesn’t prevent you from leaving, in case you need to leave. Very useful, again, for preventing break-ins through your doors. And depending on where you are, how you live, the places and location, this could be a super useful tool to help and keep you well-protected.
So we’ve gone through nine things. I’ve actually thrown in a couple of bonus ones, but we’ve gone through the main nine things. And the last thing that I want to discuss, and that is your last resort safety item. And that’s a gun. I don’t know where you live, where you’re listening from, but I live in the United States. And I think a gun is a great last resort safety mechanism for you to have in your house. Because let’s face it, if somebody is breaking into your house and you’ve done everything else, and they make it into your house, they want in your house for something, and you need that extra protection that just only really comes from a gun.
Hopefully you’ve done enough at this point that the police are on their way, and they’re almost there since they’re actively trying to get in. But sometimes that’s not always the case and that’s not necessarily the thing that happens and you need something else. And so I recommend a gun, just pure and simple. Specifically the type of gun that I recommend for home safety for in case somebody comes in, because we don’t know why they’re in there, especially if they’re going to go through all that effort to get into your house while you’re there. And I recommend something like an AR-15, or an AK-47, a semiautomatic. Something that can have standard capacity magazine of 30 shells, or 30 rounds. Because that’s going to be something that most people can shoot. They’re going to be able to shoot it well, and it’s not going to terrify the shooter. Because the last thing you want is somebody terrified of a gun while they’re shooting, or not being able to handle it well.
I can give most normal people an AR-15, or AK-47, and they can put a shot on target first time. It’s not going to be the best shot. They’re not necessarily going to get a good grouping. They’re not going to have a lot of consistency. However, it has light recoil. They can support it against themselves and they can at least get it pointed at the mass of somebody that just came through a door and they could pull the trigger several times. It’s not a very large caliber gun, at least the AR-15. It’s the size of a 22 rifle. It just has a little more punch to it. But it’s a lot better for that person, especially somebody’s not as used to guns that only a fire a few times, to have a rifle in order to be able to shoot an intruder, heaven forbid in case that needs to happen.
The next step, if you don’t want go for the AR, or the AK is a shotgun. Get probably a 20 gauge shotgun, because that’s going to have enough oomph to it. The problem is, is they’re scary because they’re loud and they punch. And so some people, they’re not going to like the feel of a shotgun. And so they’re going to get really, really nervous trying to shoot that shotgun and potentially cause other issues. However, it does have a lot of shopping power because let’s face it, 10 feet away, you get shot with bird shot, or a slug, you’re going to be like, “Hey, let’s back off a little bit.”
The downside is, depending on what you have and what you buy, you either need to pump for the next shot, unless you want to spend that little extra money and you have repeating shotgun. And you can have some other shells and then you’re going to be able to fire, or you’re going to need to break open the shotgun and load a new shell and close it back up and fire again. Depending on who’s coming through that door, physically, if it’s a man coming through that door and they’re a big person, they can take a lot of abuse before they drop, depending on what’s going on inside of their system.
If they’re on PCP, you better fire all 30 rounds of your AR and you better fire all five shots of your shotgun. And they still might not even go down. But even testosterone and adrenaline can prevent… I’ve watched videos where people have been shot five times by a 45 caliber hand pistol from only a few feet away, and they’re still going. They didn’t live later, but in that moment they were still going. You can see some crazy stuff.
The final thing I recommend for safety, gun-wise is a pistol. The reason I don’t recommend that first and the reason I don’t think it’s a good safety gun to begin with, especially in your house, is because it takes accuracy. It takes somebody knowing how to shoot it and being able to shoot it under stress. Just with movements of your hand, without any support, you can shoot all over the place, and never actually hit the person that you’re trying to hit. That’s why I totally recommend something that is a long gun that you can support against your shoulder, and you can get on target fast. I’m not going to make any specific recommendations about any of all of this. These are just my recommendations and stuff that I’ve learned over the years, and come to an understanding about safety and security in your own home.
If you do all of these things, it’s not going to stop every bad thing from happening, but you’re going to go a long way to making sure you, your house and your family are safe in a lot of instances. And in a few cases, things are just going to be nicer around the house, especially when it comes to all the lighting. It’s crazy how annoying life can be whenever there’s not a lot of light. And then all of a sudden you add things to have lighting around the house.
So with that, these are all things that you can do yourself that are quick and easy. In most cases, affordable, to allow more safety and more security in your house. And I totally recommend you go through all of those steps and you figure out what you need and what you think is good for you, in your situation and where you live. So with that, let’s jump into the failure of the week and I’m going to go with not having any fire extinguishers. I think I always think about getting fire extinguishers, but I’m never in a moment that I can actually buy them.
And you just realize when it comes to safety and how easy it is really for stuff to light on fire. Heck, on camp outs, we would accidentally start fires in areas that we weren’t supposed to. It’s funny, sometimes we could start a fire on accident, in areas we weren’t supposed to, but man, sometimes when we’re trying to start a fire, we were supposed to start a fire, we couldn’t get the stupid thing lit. Anyway, I just realized, especially doing work in my shop, I need a fire extinguisher and we need fire extinguishers in the house. So, that was a failure on my part, but I immediately, as soon as it hit me, and I was in a place to buy them, I just ordered five, just right away, within probably two or three minutes of coming up to that realization.
So yeah, that was a failure on my part, and it’s bad, but they should be here this week. And that should be one less thing to actually worry about. So on that note, what is it in your life that you could do to out a little extra safety and little extra security in your situation? Because not everything I’ve talked about today is a good fit for your situation, but several of the things are, and several of the things are at least good things to think about. Definitely give what your situation is a thought. Think of all the different ways that things could go bad, and what is something that you can do to solve that problem and keep you a little bit safer.
So with that, I thank you for your time. I thank you for your attention. Please join us in the next episode of episode 22 next week, where hopefully we’ll talk about dust collection and what a crazy, crazy world that is. On that note, have a good day and we’ll see you next time.
BudDIY Podcast – Episode 20 – Basics of Raising Chickens Part 2