The holidays are an exciting time of the year when people celebrate with friends and family, exchange gifts and spread cheer and positivity. However, the fast pace of holiday preparation can also lead to mishaps like falls from high places, Christmas tree fires and undercooked turkeys.

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Thankfully, many holiday accidents can be easily avoided by following safety measures, double-checking instructions and simply taking the time to slow down. Read on to learn more about common holiday accidents and how to avoid them this season.

What Are the Most Common Home Accidents That Happen Around the Holidays?

Accidents are fairly common during the festive season, with one of the main contributors being a rushed pace to ensure the house is decorated, presents are wrapped and food is prepared in time for the celebration. Here are some of the most common home accidents that occur during the holiday season:

Falls From High Places

Whether it’s your job each year to string the holiday lights along the roof edge or up the staircase, or you’re in charge of placing the star or angel on the top branch of the Christmas tree, falls are extremely common. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control, thousands of people experience falls each year due to holiday decorating from dangerous heights.

Slipping on Ice

For those who live in colder regions, snow and ice can lead to serious slip-and-fall accidents and ruin your holiday plans. Melting snow can drip down off roofs and gutters or freeze on the ground, creating slick patches of ice that people are often unaware of until it’s too late.

Fires Caused by Lights and Candles

The Consumer Product Safety Commission says fires caused by Christmas tree lights and holiday candles can lead to significant injuries and property damage costs during the holidays. These fires often occur when homeowners leave burning candles unattended during parties or throughout the evening to enhance the overall holiday ambiance. The combination of damaged holiday lights and dried-out tree needles can lead to sparks that ignite entire trees in a short period of time.

Cooking Accidents

Common cooking accidents that can happen during the holidays include kitchen fires due to leaving cooking food unattended on the stovetop, scalds and burns caused by fryers and food-borne illnesses from consuming undercooked food or food that’s been sitting out for too long without proper temperature control.

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How Can You Prevent Holiday-Related Accidents?

While holiday mishaps can sometimes happen through no fault of your own, taking safety precautions while decorating, cooking and even shoveling the front walk can significantly lower the chance of serious accidents occurring. Here are some tips to help you enjoy this holiday season while avoiding unfortunate incidents:

Take Precautions When Working at Height

When hanging holiday lights or placing the top decoration on the tree, designate someone to spot you by holding the ladder to keep it secure. If your roof is significantly high off the ground, consider wearing a safety harness for additional protection. It’s also important to wear nonslip shoes to prevent slipping as you climb the ladder and when you’re up on the roof.

De-Ice

If your front wall or driveway is prone to ice during the holiday season, you can help prevent slips and falls by applying ice melt or rock salt to ice patches to create traction while melting the ice. There are also non-chemical options, such as plain sand and mats made with non-skid materials, that can be placed on your walkways after snowfalls.

Prevent Fires

While holiday lights are beautiful when left on overnight, it’s important to check all light sockets for fire hazards such as frayed wires and broken bulbs. If you’d like to display your holiday lights into the late-night hours, consider using a timer so they shut off automatically.

Only use candles on stable surfaces that are resistant to heat and fire, and make sure to extinguish all flames before turning in for the night. If you’re buying a fake Christmas tree, purchase one that’s fire-retardant. If you’re using a natural tree, check the water level on a daily basis and replenish it when necessary.

Cook Carefully

To keep your kitchen safe during the holidays, never leave food cooking on the stovetop unattended, and be sure to check on anything baking in the oven on a frequent basis. If you’re deep-frying a turkey, set the fryer up outside and follow the instructions carefully to prevent oil overflows. To avoid food-borne illnesses, make sure that turkeys and other poultry reach an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit (74 degrees Celsius). If you plan to set up food on a buffet table, use warmers to keep appetizers and other dishes warm and place cold items over trays of ice.

Thanksgiving and all its casseroles, meats and treats are notoriously hard on the pipes inside your body. But the holiday can also wreak havoc on the pipes inside your home — so much so that plumbers have a name for the abnormally high-call day after Thanksgiving: Brown Friday. (Ew!)

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Broken garbage disposals, backed-up showers and monster clogs in the kitchen sink are nothing to be thankful for. Keep these three tips in mind this holiday to prevent plumbing problems.

1. Skip the Garbage Disposal

Even in the best of times, your garbage disposal can get bound up by fibrous foods, such as celery, rhubarb, potato skins and onion peels. On Thanksgiving, the threat is only compounded by starchy leftovers like stuffing, rice, baked beans and mac ’n’ cheese. These expand when they get wet, creating a carby clog in your drain. In trying to dispose of a plentiful bounty of waste, you run the risk of overburdening your machine. This can lead to burnout (a concept many of us who are thankful for these few days off are all too familiar with) and a call to your plumber.

Your best bet is to treat your sink as if you don’t have a garbage disposal at all. In fact, don’t even tell your kind, dish-washing guests that you have one, lest they get any ideas. Instead, put a strainer in the drain to catch particles and empty scraps and leftovers straight into the trash can.

2. Remember: Oil and Water Don’t Mix

If you get nothing else from this, just please take away this essential piece of advice: Grease has no place in your drains.

Anything greasy — like frying oil, fat, meat drippings and melted butter — is only a true liquid while it’s hot. And during that state of matter, you might believe that it’s perfectly fine to pour it right down the drain. But, at some point, you’re going to run some cold water in the sink. This could cause that grease, which hasn’t made it all the way out of your plumbing system, to harden. Over time, it can clump together, creating an impenetrable ball of fat only a plumber can remove.

Wait for grease to cool before pouring it into an empty can or other disposable container. Then, dispose of it in the trash. If you’re worried about tossing too much liquid, you can freeze it first. If you have a large volume of frying oil, consider purchasing a grease disposal system or disposable grease bags.

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3. Keep Tabs on Your Guests’ Bathroom Habits

No matter if you have overnight guests for the better part of the week or some drifters blowing in and out for dinner and dessert, they’re going to need to use your bathroom. And at the risk of sounding like you’re trying to micromanage your guests’ hygiene routine, you’re going to want to set some ground rules.

Here’s what we suggest:

• Wait at least ten minutes between showers. This will give your drains time to clear and your water heater time to catch back up.
• The toilet is for toilet paper and human waste only. Everything else (cotton swabs, food, wrappers, face wipes, diapers, etc.) should find its way to the bathroom trashcan.
• Flushable wipes are — get this — not flushable. Despite the branding, they just don’t break down like toilet paper does. So, the TP-only rule stands.
• Let ’er drip! If you have certain faucets you keep dripping to avoid pipe freezing, let your guests know this is not a water-wasting oversight on your part.

Whether you type these up in an aggressive font and post the list opposite the toilet or just kindly ask your guests to respect your pipes is up to you — just make sure they know what’s up.

An Ounce of Prevention…

Of course, good plumbing maintenance year-round can lessen the shock to the system that is a houseful of guests and a kitchen full of food. But these tips should help you get through Brown Friday as uneventfully as possible.

And listen: Your local plumber (who’d like to enjoy their holiday, too, mind you) is practically begging you to heed this advice. And if you don’t? Well … At least they’ll get to collect sky-high emergency plumbing callout fees for services rendered on a holiday or the weekend. Your choice.