Home safety is a hot topic, with innumerable TV shows, books and DVDs available to teach you how to keep yourself and your family safe from everything from burglars to house fires. One thing that gets overlooked, though, is food home safety. Poor attention to food safety and lack of knowledge about it contribute to food-borne illnesses, which cause more hospitalizations every year than other home dangers combined.
One simple thing you can do is to check your refrigerator. Most kitchen stores and mega stores sell refrigerator/freezer thermometers, which will allow you to check the actual temperature inside the appliances, ensuring that they are functioning properly. Be sure and move the thermometer around, checking inside the crisper drawers and on the door shelves. If airflow is blocked, the drawers could become too warm, meaning food could spoil.
Also, never, ever put hot food into your refrigerator. It will cause the temperature within the refrigerator to rise steeply, and other foods in the refrigerator can spoil in the time it takes for equilibrium to be restored. Use an ice bath to bring the temperature of hot foods down before putting them in cold storage.
In the freezer, make sure you don’t let ice build up on racks, walls and vents. Most modern freezers are frostless, but in times of heavy use they can need some help.
All around the kitchen, let sterilization be your watchword. A simple solution of one tablespoon of bleach to one gallon of water is all you need to kill bad bugs on kitchen surfaces, and you can even make such a mixture in your sink and dip your small kitchen items in it to keep them spotless and germ-free.
Practicing food safety around the home isn’t hard at all to do, but it does require constant attention. Every time you cook, take a few extra minutes to make sure your workspace is well cleaned both before and after the process. You won’t regret it!
Watch the video related to home safety
To protect pre-school children from fires and burns, Rover, the Home Safety Hound, and Freddie Flashlight lead a room-by room home tour to help them identify hot items in every room of the home. Rover and Freddie encourage children to stay away from hot items and alert a parent or caregiver if they spot a hazard. The video is also available in Spanish. Learn more, visit www.homesafetycouncil.org
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need ideas for child safety in home for 9 yr old?I have a 9 yr old with severe ADHD and other medical problems. He is now getting to the porint to where he can't trusted safety wise for he has done things that would cause harm to others. I need any ideas on how to child proof my home so others can be safe and him. He can take things off and part if he wants so i'm all out of ideas. If you can think of anything i would greatly appreicate it.
About Author
Andrew Krause is a Chef and Pastry Chef for over 30 years, at persent I own a Gourmet Bakery called The Cheese Confectioner.You can visit my site at For Free Recipes.net NOTE: You are welcome to reprint this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the about the author info at the end).
I keep a spray bottle with water/bleach-after using a utensil on uncooked meat I rinse it,put it in the sink and spray with bleach. When I need it again I rinse the bleach off and repeat the whole process. The spray also comes in handy for knives,cutting boards, pet dishes,etc.