Have you ever walked into work, sat down, turned on your computer, and then have a panic attack as you realize that you can’t remember if you turned off the iron or not? Maybe the same experience has happened to you about a curling or straightening iron left in the bathroom.
Something about the computer screen bursting to life makes you imagine your home bursting into flames because of your little mistake. Fire damage would become rampant, spreading wildly across your entire neighborhood.
And you would be the one to blame. Adrenaline starts pumping through your veins, pushing your heart to beat faster and faster.
Your thoughts become frantic. You just got to your seat and barely clocked in in time.
If you drive the thirty minutes back to your home only to find you actually unplugged the iron, you will feel the mighty fool as you sheepishly walk in an hour late for work. Not only that, but it will be another unexplained absence on your schedule that workforce management will judge you for.
On the other hand, if you don’t go home and check, you are going to be on the edge of the seat, wondering if you will be the headline of the next news article about fire damage. You would gasp in horror if you saw your house in flames on a local news network.
You would come back with an even more embarrassing story with nothing but an extra hours pay to give you comfort. What good is ten to thirty extra dollars compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars you just lost in a home?
Hope you have good insurance. No, it is always best to find a way to check in this situation.
A better thing to do would be to properly prepare against these occurrences. If you are properly prepared, you need not lose that hour, nor worry about it for the rest of the day.
Here are two ways to prepare yourself against fire damage. Make an alarm on your phone to go off ten minutes before you leave the house every day.
Set your personal preparation time at the beginning of every day, allowing you the chance to be doing something other than getting ready when the alarm goes off. Should you still be using the iron when the alarm goes off, you are far less likely to consciously think about unplugging it.
You will think about it for a second, turn back to your ironing, and then realize you have to leave and rush out the door without another thought till you sit down at your desk. Instead, have all of those tasks taken care of first, then when you’re sitting down for breakfast, your alarm can go off and you can immediately check on the situation.
Another alternative is to replace your “hot” appliances with auto shut off appliances ones. These appliances will recognize inactivity after a set period of time and will turn off.
Although they are extremely annoying if you turn them on to heat up, go do something and come back to find it has already shut off. When you’re on the run though, they can be extremely helpful at preventing fire damage.