Safe Storage & Emergency Prep
Not a room: a whole-home layer. Working smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, medicines and any firearms stored where kids can't reach them, and an emergency kit ready to grab. Your answers about medicines and firearms stay on this device.
The 5-minute fixes
- Put smoke alarms inside every bedroom, outside each sleeping area and on every level of the home, including the basement, and test each one once a month. Smoke Alarms
- Install battery-operated or battery-backup carbon monoxide alarms near every sleeping area in your home, as CDC advises. Carbon Monoxide Alarms (Whole Home)
- Keep medicines, vitamins and supplements up high, out of sight and, ideally, locked, and put them back right after every dose. Medicines, Vitamins & Supplements
- If there are firearms in your home, the American Academy of Pediatrics advises storing every one locked and unloaded, with ammunition locked separately. Firearm Storage
Start here
NFPA: roughly 3 out of 5 home fire deaths happen in homes with no smoke alarms or no working smoke alarms
National Fire Protection Association, 2018
CDC estimates that each year more than 400 Americans die from unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning not linked to fires, more than 100,000 visit an emergency department and more than 14,000 are hospitalized
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (incl. WISQARS, NCHS, MMWR), 2026
Pills on a nightstand or kitchen counter between doses; a weekly pill organizer (many aren't child-resistant); gummy vitamins that look like candy; medicine in a purse, diaper bag, coat pocket or a visitor's bag; a cap that wasn't twisted until it clicked.
A firearm kept unlocked, whether in a nightstand, on a closet shelf, in a glove box or in a bag; ammunition stored with it; a key or combination that a child or teen could find.
Next up
A playdate, sleepover, babysitter's or relative's home where you don't know whether there are firearms or how they're stored.
When you have a minute
No water or food stored beyond what's in the fridge; flashlights and batteries scattered around the house; no copies of important family documents; baby formula and diapers that would run out in a day.
Air in this room
What can end up in the air here, from fumes and off-gassing to combustion gases.
Read more about air
Shop safer for this room
Our reviewed picks for the products that live here. Each one links to its category page, not to a store.