Safety Warning: Storing Chemicals In Your Garage
Homeowners and renters take great strides to ensure that their families are safe in the sanctity of their homes. Everyone takes extra precautions to ensure that they have the best security and that anything harmful is kept out of reach especially from children. Storage space inside the home often becomes cluttered and filled up quickly, so people start to store things in their garages. This includes everything from household items to the yard and garden equipment and everything in between which could consist of flammable liquids. Often times, harmful chemicals are stored in the garage. These could be household cleaners, car maintenance chemicals like window washing fluid and antifreeze, and gardening chemicals like fertilizers and pesticides. While these are all chemicals commonly stored in garages, they are hazardous and could cause accidents.
The above-mentioned chemicals should be properly stored in the garage to avoid any danger to family members. Consider a few ways to childproof your garage, and assure safety for the family.
1. Harmful chemicals should be kept out of reach from small children and pets who are very curious. Improperly stored chemicals can be deadly The chemicals should not be easily accessible. Consider the child’s height, and ability to climb. Put chemicals on a shelf that is unreachable even if the child climbs on a crate of the shelf.
2. When storing chemicals, make sure that they are in proper containers. It is best to store chemicals in the container it was purchased in. Do not pour any chemical into another container like a bottle, and store it in the garage in that container. A child can easily mistake this for what usually in the container. Be careful because some chemicals must be stored in their original containers as they will corrode metal ones, or eat through plastic ones.
3. All chemicals should be properly labeled when you childproof your garage. Try to leave the original label on the items if at all possible. If the label becomes loosened, put it back on with tape. If a chemical has no label due to excess use, make a suitable label that has the name in bold letters, and the date that it was stored. Paints that have lost labels should also have the color printed on the homemade label. When chemicals are labeled before storing them in the garage, you know exactly where to find what you need later.
4. Another way to ensure proper storage of chemicals is to purchase a lockable chemical storage cabinet. This works better than trying to store all hazardous materials on a high shelf. The cabinets come in a variety of sizes so as not to take up more space than is needed.
For more ideas on garage safety, check out our blog.
