My husband and I splurged a little bit and decided to get a small space heater.
We didn’t really need it for any room in particular, but we figured that we could use the space heater for our bedroom.
This would allow us to change the thermostat in the rest of the house and save money on bills. When we opened the box for our new space heater, we noticed that there was a warning label that you were not supposed to leave space heaters running when no one was home. This meant that you would not be able to use the space heater at night or while you weren’t at home. I figured that this was just one of those useless warning labels, and we both completely ignored it. I plugged that space heater in, changed the thermostat to the rest of my house, and used the new space heater during the night for a few months. However, one night, something bad happened. My new space heater became overheated while we were sleeping, and it melted the whole power cord. I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the kitchen, and I realized that I smelled burnt rubber in our house. The heater wasn’t working, and I noticed that the cord was completely burned. You could see the bare wires underneath the rubber! Thankfully, the wires turned off the breaker, so my space heater didn’t catch my house on fire, but it was a close call. I was shaken up though because I had heard horror stories of homes catching on fire from space heaters, but I didn’t think it would happen to me. I guess we need to listen to warning labels next time.