Safety First

The doorbell rang. I went to answer it and peeked out the peephole. What? That can't be a hook and ladder fire truck parked in front of my house! (It was!) I sniffed for smoke and threw open the door. Standing there with a polite smile on his face, was the tallest, most imposing fireman I've ever seen up close. I'm not even sure if I'd ever seen another fireman that close, imposing or not.

"Hello. We're checking houses in the neighborhood for fire hazards. If we find you have any we will stick a red fire hazard sticker on them."

"Sure, c'mon in. The kids told us it was fire safety week. They pretty much took care of all the fire hazards they spotted."

"Well, I'm glad to say they didn't leave many unspotted. However, there is a problem in the garage." (Right! The garage is all kinds of a disaster area but I thought the kids had taken care of the spontaneous combustibles.)

"All exits must be clear and the pathways to them also. See these tables here?" The tables in question were two folded card tables leaning against the wall and sticking out about six inches into the pathway to the side yard exit which we seldom used. "In case of a fire, no exit or pathway to any exit should be impeded. I won't give you a sticker because you have already cleared the pathway. Congratulate the young fire safety experts. Have a nice day."

Take a look around. Is the pathway to any exit impeded? Could anyone run from any room in the house (as in to escape a fire or to answer the phone) without tripping over something that doesn't belong there (toys, clothing, auto parts, fast food containers, laundry)? Clear the pathways.

When Wendle came into his wife's home office, he tripped over something on the floor, turning his ankle. His mild rebuke was a gem, "This has gone beyond messy, it's now an issue of safety!"

Does this scene sound familiar? Has your clutter level reached a point where it's gotten out of control, gone beyond messy into un-safety or become a health hazard? If this is the case and conditions are unsafe, deal with those first. You can have lots of stuff and still have a safe environment.

Is every flat surface piled with things like leftover pepperoni pizza, the melted ice dregs of somebody's soda-pop, last week's newspaper, last year's magazines or even worse, last year's newspapers? Maybe all of the above and more?

You may not want to bother with organizing your socks drawer, but the spoiled food in the refrigerator is risky. Salmonella grows rapidly and other little nasties may lie behind the scenes. I was grown up before I realized LA CUCARACHA wasn't just a cute, catchy song.

My introduction to maggots came when I was working with a non-op. I didn't know what they were. Flies? Really? Yuck! The transition from maggots to flies was further shown on the floor of the children's playroom where several thousand dead flies lay by the glass doors.

I can say about the same for my first experience with six inches of mold growing up out of a pot of beans on the back burner of another non-op I worked with.

I can top that experience. I went on a first consulting visit to a non-op. She had agreed to work with me, although she was reclusive. It was a blustery March day and I had a fairly longish drive out to her place past the outskirts of town. She had several children, the youngest was nine months old and crawling. The entire house at floor level was beyond unsafe. I barely made it to a place to sit without breaking a leg. I tried not to show my emotions as I watched the baby crawl toward an atrophied mouse caught in a trap amid the dried needles under the Christmas tree.

I can even top that experience. I cleaned a fourteen-room house I owned that had been rented to a sweet young couple--but they turned it into a commune. Twenty-five "hippies" lived there, and when they moved out I didn't allow anyone to come near it for fear they might catch a terminal illness. I cleaned it out myself with a push garage broom, a shovel, a bucket of pine oil water, a garden hose, and hauled away three trailers full of garbage. The "hippies" had used one room for nature calls, some of which they just left on the floor, some of which they contained in bottles of various shapes and sizes and threw out the window into the hay-high weeds. My, what a lot of different kinds of beer bottles. Wait! This isn't beer!

I consider these examples of "beyond messy" and way into the field of health and safety or should I say unhealthy and unsafe.

Jennifer had just returned from a shopping spree. Among her purchases was a storage container to be assembled. She went into the kitchen to get a drink of water. The kitchen was a mess and there were flies on the cats' bowl. Rather than clean up the mess and get rid of the flies, she chose to put the storage container together because that was more fun.

Questioning why she didn't deal with the flies, she told herself, "That's gross! Excuse me! If not you, who? Mom ain't here no more. What? You think a genie's gonna pop out of a lamp or a fairy godmother's gonna wave her magic wand and everything will sparkle? Get real! Reality is it won't take 30 seconds to rinse out the cats' bowl. This is one of those safety first times--DO IT NOW!"

In checking out why she didn't deal with the flies, Jennifer used some great excuses. 1) "I didn't care about the flies--that was a lie, the bowl looked gross! 2) My brain didn't process the information past my eyes--also a lie--I saw it and thought it was gross! 3) The mess was overwhelming and draining, taking all of my energy--another lie--I assembled the storage container. 4) I am able to compartmentalize my actions. My brain separates what my eyes see into compartments and I can see the mess, the flies, process the information, assess it, analyze it, decide it isn't important to me and shine it on (ignore it)."

"Wait a minute! There's nobody here but me. If not me, who? The choice is mine. Yes, I can ignore it, but that won't help. The flies will allow maggots and multiply the grossness. Thirty seconds? Come on!"

Try thinking of yourself as a Buckstop (as in the buck stops here with you) and deal with life now as you find it. Reality is putting this newspaper in the trash, this little paper in the trash, this sweater in the closet. A mess isn't one newspaper on the sofa, but if you always leave the newspaper on the sofa, it becomes a mess. You can keep up, not let it go. If you do let it go, you'll have to do a marathon to catch up.