Tidy House is Safer House
In this series, we have been discussing what can save you a trip to the hospital. Our message is mostly focused on staying at home, hand washing, and wearing masks when out in public. But even when you’re in the confines of your home, obstructing objects and slippery floors can cause you to slip.
What’s worse is that slips and trips can lead to accidents and maybe even death. Yes, accidents happen but what if we have a way of avoiding this unfortunate scenario?
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), slips, trips, and falls cause nearly 700 fatalities per year and that is in the workplace. Does that mean we’re safe inside our homes?
We would say, heck no! But how can we avoid it? In the last video, we discussed how you can strengthen your stability and give you more endurance through simple workout techniques. Should you follow religiously, it can do wonders for your total well-being.
It can make you more stable and give you the endurance for more control over your movements. Being able to do so, can help you prevent it. But what other things can you do to avoid those ill-fated accidents?
What Should We Do?
Since most of us are in lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, we don’t have a choice but to stay at home. With so much time at our disposal, we need to put things in order, declutter, and tidy up things. Why?
Because we don’t want to end up slipping and tripping all over the place. According to OSHA, slips happen when there isn’t enough friction or traction between your feet and the surface you’re walking on.
Common causes of slips include wet or oily floors, spills, loose or unanchored mats, and flooring that lacks the same degree of traction in all areas. Trips, on the other hand, happen when your foot strikes an object, causing you to lose your balance.
Workers trip due to a variety of reasons, including clutter in walkways, poor lighting, uncovered cables, drawers being left open, and wrinkled carpeting or rugs. To help prevent slips and trips, we need to clean up spills immediately and make sure that it’s not slippery anymore.
Keep your walkways free of debris, clutter, and obstacles. By keeping walkways clear, you can quickly reduce the potential for injury. Be sure also to keep your stairwells clear, well-lit, and free from unsecured objects.
Keep your closet and desk drawers shut when not in use. Also, cover cables or cords in walkways, make sure that it’s tucked in, and use cable clips to keep it neat. You may also consider installing abrasive floor mats or replacing worn flooring.
Lastly, make sure that your home is well-lit, and if you have the means you can invest in solar panel roofs to save electric consumption. Doing these things can make you worry-free and you can do everything in your place with confidence.
You can always blame carelessness or clumsiness but accidents are preventable should you follow these steps.
Why Should We Declutter?
Having said all that it’s a must to put your house in order. Yes, you’re careful and you might say it hasn’t happened, how about your kids playing around the house or your aged family members?
Kids don’t have developed coordination and they can tumble on obstructing objects. Your aged loved ones might have poor eyesight to clearly see things and when accidents happen, it will cost you a trip to the hospital. With the pandemic overcrowding our healthcare system, it’s something we want to avoid.
Why is it a good thing to declutter and put things in order? There’s a need to purge things because we have so much stuff and we have more things than we need. It’s causing some areas in our place a mess. Decluttering can clear your mind and it can be therapeutic.
With high levels of anxiety and fear of the future looming in our heads, doing these things will surely help. When your mind is calm and your head is clear your creativity increases.
That means you’d be more productive and when your creative juices are flowing, possibilities are endless. You might be able to create something beautiful a la Da Vinci or invent something that can transform everyone’s lives.
How awesome could that be right? According to Marie Kondo’s Spark Joy: A Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up, life truly begins only when you put your house in order.
This doesn’t mean that you just dump anything and everything, far from it. Only when you know how to choose those things that spark joy can you attain your ideal lifestyle. If you are confident that something brings you joy, keep it regardless of what anyone else might say.
Even if it’s not perfect, no matter how mundane it might be when you use it with care and respect, you transform it into something priceless. As you repeat the selection process, you increase your sensitivity to joy.
This not only accelerates your tidying pace but also hones your decision-making capacity in all areas of life. Taking good care of things leads to taking good care of yourself.
What can we learn from it?
So not only that clearing things up can prevent certain injuries, but it can also help you psychologically. Imagine the impact of tidying up in your life, it can be life-changing and transform your life entirely.
Yes, this can require a lot of time and effort and you need to do it constantly, but taking care of your household means also taking care of yourself. Deciding on what to discard and what to keep can be challenging and some of us hold back but like what Marie Kondo says, decide on what sparks joy in your life.
If it makes you smile and brings back the memories, then keep it. Discard and get rid of the unnecessary stuff just like what we do when we detoxify ourselves to keep us healthy. This time, our emotional and mental sake is also at stake and it can benefit from it a lot.
The moment that you start tidying, not only can it can keep your loved ones from the hospital, but it can spark the joy that you’ve all been looking for all your life. When that happens, it’s magical. We hope you do this because you care for your families, and that you want them safe and sound.
If that happens, you can sleep like a baby, and amid this crisis, you have the peace of mind of knowing that you did everything you could to keep your loved ones safe. Isn’t what we look for, to protect our friends & families no matter what?
