When Decorating for Halloween - Think Safety

If you're thinking of decorating for the upcoming Halloween season, the Better Business Bureau out of Athens has a few safety issues for you to take into consideration. The BBB asks that you take heed of the following advice for both inside and outside when decorating: 

• If the tag says "Indoor Use Only," keep it inside. Maybe more than any other holiday, Halloween lends itself to electronic products that leap into action when someone crosses a motion detector's beam. Many of these more modern "scare in a box" items suck up a healthy dose of electricity, are controlled by fairly delicate electronics, and aren't cheap. It hardly makes sense to expose your couple hundred dollars' worth of hardware to the elements, much less run the risk of shocking a curious 8-year-old who happens to poke or prod the boogeyman on your wet porch. Even if you make every effort to duct tape the connections and ground the plugs, your liability is huge if you ignore such a simple direction. (The same goes for lighting kits and other electrical decorations.)

• Make your yard a No Tripping Zone. Kids lugging around buckets of candy in ill-fitting costumes, often peeking through eyeholes in masks that give them the focal powers of a bleary groundhog, are notoriously clumsy. Even if you have a major lawn display this Halloween, you should have a clear path in and out of the candy distribution area. No power cords. No tie-lines for inflatable props. Keep the path clear.

• Keep the good stuff out of reach. Besides being notoriously clumsy, kids are also insatiably curious. They're going to wonder if that $500 fog-spewing, bigger-than-life, fully-lit, dancing Grim Reaper is a robot or just you in a suit, and there's nothing that spoils a circuit board faster than a steep fall off a couple of hay bales onto your neighbor's driveway or the front stoop of your house. Much the same can be said of party-goers who have sampled your witches' brew punch a time or two. Rule of Thumb: The more expensive and/or delicate the item, the farther it should be out of reach and the more protected it should be. You can display your best Halloween toys and still protect them. A hacked-together cemetery fence will cost you no more than some screws and PVC pipe, can add to the general spookiness, and can help keep your precious ghouls out of the reach of guests most prone to fumbling.