Fire Safety with Toddlers

It just so happens that October is Fire Prevention Month, and it also happened to be the month my husband and I watched THE episode of This Is Us. You know... the one with the Crock Pot? If you don't know, just ignore me, and let it be sufficed that my already safety-conscious husband decided to check on all of the fire and CO alarms in the house.THANK GOODNESS HE DID!We ended up finding that one of our upstairs units had dead batteries, but there was no indication to us that the batteries were dying, and I have no idea how long this thing had been non-functioning!Enter First Alert! When they contacted us to help spread the word about their nuisance free alarms, I was ALL in! What exactly does that mean? Well, these alarms (Carbon Monoxide and Smoke & Fire) have a battery that lasts 10 years (yeah, seriously), so you know you don't have to worry about checking on them frequently. When the battery does start to fade, there is a timer on the CO alarm and a signal on the smoke alarm.I quickly set out to read the manuals and found a few things out about each alarm:

1. Smoke alarms should be installed in level of your home, along with a Carbon Monoxide detector. They should also be placed in hallways, at the top of stairs, and if possible, in each bedroom.
2. Smoke alarms and Carbon Monoxide alarms should be at least 20 feet away from appliances like ovens or furnaces, and 10 feet from high humidity areas like laundry rooms and showers.
3. Do not place Carbon Monoxide detectors in kitchens, garages, or dusty/dirty areas.

So here's what we did. We replaced our downstairs fire and smoke alarm and placed it between our living room, kitchen and laundry room. It falls well within the guidelines for distance from appliances, and covers an area that includes a gas fireplace, large appliances and an oven.The fact that this alarm is so slim and all white means it blends in perfectly with the ceiling and I don't have to be visually reminded that it's there, but I now have huge peace of mind knowing that this little alarm is in a proper place!Upstairs, we placed a smoke alarm on a wall between two bedrooms (where our boys sleep). This is also where we placed the Carbon monoxide alarm. You can see this unit also comes with a digital temperature display, so it sort of just looks like a thermostat on the wall.The particular unit we got can actually just sit on a piece of furniture, like a dresser. I think that's genius, but when dealing with two toddlers, nothing is safe!I placed it at about 5 feet high, so no tiny hands can grab at it!I can't even begin to tell you how much better I feel now that these are both in place!If you'd like to look at more of the alarms that First Alert has to offer, go check them out on their site. Thanks so much to First Alert for sponsoring this post, and of course, all opinions are my own!