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Author Topic: Clean up that mess!  (Read 1484 times)
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Patrick J. / KD5OEI
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« on: April 15, 2019, 09:47:07 PM »

If not for the grace of God and landing partly on a big load of laundry I might have been hurt.

Went out the back room door into the utility room. This room has the washer, drier, and furnace. It's 12x15 so it also has a lot of radio junk piled up. The light switch is several few feet from the door since the space is an old porch that was fully enclosed with no windows.

I have been very lazy about keeping it orderly and clear. A small pile of stuff had tipped over because it was not stacked well and was about 1 FT in front of the door out there, after a step down.

With no light, and loaded up with dirty laundry obscuring my view, I tripped right over it in the dark. I fell into a stack of rackmount scopes and cartons of new 4FT fluorescent lamps. But other things also followed me down to the floor at that moment, among them a 6 lb maul which managed to fall on top of me. After I hit the floor, things kept falling in the dark and a few smaller ones were felt. It was only a couple of seconds but it felt a lot longer until the noise stopped.

So, I was not hurt, only embarrassed, Thanking the Lord sincerely for that. It could have been worse, for example if one or more scopes fell on me, or if the maul hit edge first or somewhere more fragile. 

I slowly got up, still in the dark, wondering what else might be teetering there, and trying to recall what was right around there in that mess.
None of the scopes were damaged thankfully. I did crush a box of those new 40W tubes and remember hearing them popping and breaking. Good thing the carton was sealed.

I take this as a reminder against sloth, to keep safety first, and keeping aisles well-clear. I also got out an old table lamp and plugged it in out there with a 3 Watt LED bulb & adapter in it running 24x7. Electricity is cheap. Going for stitches or coffins isn't.

Hope anyone who is as messy as I have been will clean up and /or light their spaces before something like this happens to them.
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« Reply #1 on: April 16, 2019, 06:07:37 PM »

  God protects fools, and hams, I guess.  I'm a ham, but sometimes I'm not entirely convinced that falling into the latter category eliminates me from the former.
  I can't tell you how many times I've stumbled over stuff in my basement.  Tripped over a bucket once, and shoved my hand into another bucket as I fell, this one full of roofing nails.  Ouch!
  Long ago I pretty much made peace with my messy habits - figure that it's so deeply ingrained in my psyche that the frustration of trying to change my ways would be unlikely to pay off much in the long run.
  But, that being said, basic attention to obvious safety hazards is always good advice.  A place for everything, and everything in its place - good words to live by, if not carried to extremes.  Back when I was a teen, and still living in my parents' house, I rolled over on a tube socket in the middle of the night.  I still have no idea how a tube socket got between my sheets, but I made it a point after that to be just a bit more careful about leaving stuff laying about.
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