When it comes to your family’s safety, you don’t want to compromise. At home you want to make sure you have all the systems in place that will protect them from any of life’s hazards and that those systems are the best ones on the market for your needs.

One of the most important safety items for your house is your smoke alarms.

I’ve partnered with Kidde, a leading manufacturer of fire safety products, to help you understand what you should look for in a smoke alarm to help keep your family safe.

Founded by Walter Kidde, the company has been a pioneer in early smoke detection and fire suppression. The company began in 1917 and started with the first integrated smoke detection and carbon dioxide extinguishing system for use on board ships. Now, Kidde products are found in homes and businesses throughout the world and their smoke and carbon monoxide alarms help to alert people faster when there is a hazard.

Kidde Worry-Free smoke alarms are designed for various areas throughout your home and they all have a 10-year sealed battery that eliminates the need for you to change the batteries twice a year during Daylight Saving Time (which is just around the corner again). The alarms provide continuous protections from smoke and fire – even when the power goes out.

Here are a few things you should know when picking smoke alarms for your home.

Know the different types of smoke alarms and understand the positives and negatives

There are two main types of smoke alarms for the home and each can serve a different purpose.

Ionizations alarms have sensors that work ionizes the air in the alarm with trace amounts of an element that sets up an electric currant. When smoke enters the alarm, it disrupts the current and makes the alarm go off. These alarms are said to be better at detecting smaller smoke particles from fast flaming fires that happen quickly.

According to Consumer Reports, these alarms are not always the best for the kitchen and bathroom areas because they are disposed to false alarms when food is burning or when there’s a lot of steam.

Photoelectric alarms have sensors that use a small pulsating strobe light and when smoke enters the detection chamber it detracts the light to trigger the alarm. These alarms are great for detecting larger smoke particles from slower and smoldering fires, including electrical fires and fires involving certain types of fabrics.

These are good for the kitchen area because they aren’t as prone to emitting false alarms from burning food or cooking steam. The Kidde Worry-Free Kitchen alarm features a photoelectric sensor and comes complete with both smoke and carbon monoxide sensing technologies. As with all Kidde Worry-Free alarms, it also boasts that same 10-year battery.

A third type of alarm is becoming more popular and that’s a duel-sensor alarm, which includes both the alarm sensors above. They are more costly than the alarms with one type of sensor. Kidde recommends that both type of alarms be installed to help ensure maximum protection for your family.

Make sure you know how your system is powered

Many smoke alarms are run off batteries and could include 9-volt, AA or AAA batteries. It is recommended you replace those batteries during Daylight Saving Time.

Some smoke alarms, the Kidde Worry-Free alarms included, come with lithium batteries that are designed to last for 10 years. This means you don’t have to worry about swapping the batteries out each year, which is a bonus since changing the batteries – even at Daylight Saving Time – can be hard to remember.

A third way to power smoke alarms is to have them hardwired into your house. However, these units need to have a back-up battery because they will not work when you have power disruptions. A lot of new homes are being built with systems like this and the alarms are all wired to one another so when one senses smoke, they all go off.

House size should be a consideration

When looking for the best smoke alarms for your house, you should plan to have an alarm in each room of your home. This includes your hallways and basement for maximum protection. Kidde makes alarms that are designed for each room and they are labeled on the packaging, so it makes picking up the proper smoke alarms easy.

It is also recommended that you have protection in the attic. However, in this instance you should consider a heat alarm. Kidde has a heat alarm that will sound if temperatures in the attic reach above 135 degrees.

Make sure it has the UL label

When picking a smoke alarm, you want to make sure the products bare the UL label. The UL label means that the prototypes have been tested and certified by the Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. There are strict rules the manufacturers are required to adhere to, and they have to prove that mass-produced products can pass specific tests. The products are tested before they go to market AND then Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. conducts follow-up tests to ensure standards are consistently being met.

Kidde units all have the UL label and the company additionally complies with guidelines from the Federal Housing Authority, Housing and Urban Development and National Fire Protection Association.

Make sure there is a way to test the device

Smoke alarms should be tested to ensure they are still working and there should be an easy way to test each unit. Kidde alarms have a large, push-button right in the middle of the unit, and they recommend you test it once a week.

Ensure that it’s easy to maintain

No matter which type of device you use, you want to make sure it is easy to keep maintained and clean.

If you buy alarms that require the batteries to be replaced, make sure there is easy access to the battery panel.

It is also recommended that you vacuum your alarm to keep it free of dust and debris that could cause it to malfunction.

Consider your family’s special needs

If you have family members with special needs, look for add-ons for your fire safety system that will help keep everyone safe. For instance, if you have someone who is deaf or hearing impaired you might want to consider alarms that will also include some sort of visual signal or motion option. Kidde has a strobe lights and other auxiliary devices available to help your family with these special circumstances.

For more information on the Kidde and all its safety products, click here. To see all their fire safety products, click here.

Grab your own Kidde 10-year battery smoke or smoke/CO alarms on ShopKidde.com and use TIMEFORACHANGE to get 20% off and free shipping!

Twenty-some years ago, fresh out of college with a horticulture degree in-hand, I started teaching adult education classes at a local botanic garden. For many years, I taught a class called Preparing Your Garden for the Winter. It was all about how to clean up the garden every fall. I would show slides (remember those?) of how well-kept gardens should look in January. In the images, every plant was cut to the nub, except for the ornamental grasses and butterfly bushes, and the whole garden was snug under a thick layer of mushroom soil mulch. The roses were neatly trimmed to two feet and wrapped in a blanket of burlap, folded and stapled closed to keep them protected from freezing winds. There was nary a fallen leaf in sight; everything was raked up and hauled off. 

You see, that’s how we gardeners used to roll in the early ’90s before we knew better. Before we knew all the reasons NOT to clean up the garden. We’d cut everything down and perform a big, end-of-the-season gardening clean up until there was no shred of nature left behind. We’d turn the place into a tidied, controlled, and only slightly dirtier version of our living room. Everything was tucked and trimmed and in its place. Most of us weren’t interested in supporting wildlife much beyond hanging up a bird feeder, and the phrase “wildlife habitat” was only used in places like zoos and national parks.

Unfortunately, many gardeners still think of this kind of hack-it-all-down and rake-it-all-up gardening clean up as good gardening, but in case you haven’t already noticed, I’m here to tell you times have changed. Preparing Your Garden for the Winter is a completely different class these days. We now understand how our yards can become havens for creatures, large and small, depending on what we plant in them and how we tend to our cultivated spaces. Thanks to books like Doug Tallamy’s Bringing Nature Home, we now know how important native plants are for insects, birds, amphibians, and even people. Our gardens play an important role in supporting wildlife and what we do in them every autumn can either enhance or inhibit that role.

To that end, I offer you these six important reasons NOT to clean up the garden in the fall.

1. The Native Bees: Many of North America’s 3500-plus species of native bees need a place to spend the winter that’s protected from cold and predators. They may hunker down under a piece of peeling tree bark, or they may stay tucked away in the hollow stem of a bee balm plant or an ornamental grass. Some spend the winter as an egg or larvae in a burrow in the ground. All native bees are important pollinators, and when we remove every last overwintering site by cutting everything down and completely cleaning up the garden, we’re doing ourselves no favor. We need these bees, and our gardens can provide them with much-needed winter habitat.

Some species of native pollinators, like this docile leafcutter bee, overwinter in hollow plant stems.

2. The Butterflies: While the monarch flies south to overwinter in Mexico, most other butterflies stay put and take shelter somewhere dry and safe until spring. Some butterflies, like the mourning cloak, comma, question mark, and Milbert’s tortoiseshell, overwinter as adults. They nestle into rock fissures, under tree bark, or in leaf litter until the days grow longer again and spring arrives. Butterflies that overwinter in a chrysalis include the swallowtail family, the cabbage whites and the sulfurs. Many of these chrysalises can be found either hanging from dead plant stems or tucked into the soil or leaf litter. You can guess what a fall gardening clean up does to them. And still, other butterfly species, such as the red-spotted purple, the viceroy, and the meadow fritillary, spend the winter as a caterpillar rolled into a fallen leaf or inside the seed pod of a host plant. If we cut down and clean up the garden, we are quite possibly eliminating overwintering sites for many of these beautiful pollinators (and perhaps even eliminating the insects themselves!). Another excellent way you can help butterflies is to build a caterpillar garden for them; here’s how. Declining butterfly populations are one of the best reasons not to clean up the garden.

3. The Ladybugs: North America is home to over 400 different ladybug species, many of which are not red with black polka-dots. While the introduced Asian multicolored ladybug comes into our homes for the winter and becomes quite a nuisance, none of our native ladybug species have any interest in spending the winter inside of your house. Most of them enter the insect world’s version of hibernation soon after the temperatures drop and spend the colder months tucked under a pile of leaves, nestled at the base of a plant, or hidden under a rock. Most overwinter in groups of anywhere from a few individuals to thousands of adults. Ladybugs are notorious pest eaters, each one consuming dozens of soft-bodied pest insects and insect eggs every day. Leaving the garden intact for the winter means you’ll get a jump start on controlling pests in the spring. Skipping a fall gardening clean up is one important way to help these beneficial insects.

Ladybug larvae, such as this one, are voracious predators of many garden pests, including the aphids in this photo. Skipping the fall garden clean up encourages them.

4. The Birds: Insect-eating birds, like chickadees, wrens, titmice, nuthatches, phoebes, and bluebirds, are very welcome in the garden because they consume thousands of caterpillars and other pest insects as they raise their young every gardening season. Not cleaning up the garden means there will be more protein-rich insects available to them during the coldest part of the year. These birds are quite good at gleaning “hibernating” insects off of dead plant stems and branches, and out of leaf litter. The more insect-nurturing habitat you have, the greater the bird population will be. Your feathered friends will also appreciate feasting on the seeds and berries they can collect from intact perennial, annual, and shrub stems. Songbirds are one of the best reasons to skip the garden clean up!

5. The Predatory Insects: Ladybugs aren’t the only predatory insects who spend the winter in an intact garden. Assassin bugs, lacewings, big-eyed bugs, minute pirate bugs, damsel bugs, ground beetles, and scores of other pest-munching predatory insects spend the winter “sleeping” in your garden as either adults, eggs, or pupae. They’re one of the best reasons not to clean up the garden in the fall because they help you control pests. To have a balanced population of these predatory insects, you have to have winter habitat; when spring arrives, they’ll be better able to keep early-emerging pests in check if they’ve spent the winter on-site, instead of over in the neighbor’s yard.

Green lacewings are one of many beneficial insects that need winter habitat.

6. The People: If the previous five reasons aren’t enough to inspire you to hold off on cleaning up the garden, I’ll add one final reason to the list: You. There is so much beauty to be found in a winter garden. Snow resting on dried seed pods, berries clinging to bare branches, goldfinches flitting around spent sunflowers, juncos hopping beneath old goldenrod fronds, frost kissing the autumn leaves collected at the base of a plant, and ice collected on blades of ornamental grasses. At first, you might not consider yourself to be one of the reasons not to clean up the garden, but winter is a lovely time out there if you let it be so.

Delaying your garden’s clean up until the spring is a boon for all the creatures living there. Instead of heading out to the garden with a pair of pruning shears and a rake this fall, wait until next April. By then, all the critters living there will be emerging from their long winter nap. And even if they haven’t managed to get out of bed by the time you head out to the garden, most of them will still manage to find their way out of a loosely layered compost pile before it begins to decompose. Do Mother Nature a big favor and save your garden clean up until the spring. And, when spring does arrive, please use these pollinator-friendly tips for cleaning up the garden the right way.

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