Home Improvement

Home Disasters That Can Ruin Christmas

Christmas is stressful. We all know that. For one thing, there’s all that family you don’t actually like very much that you feel obliged to visit and then there’s the dozens of nieces and nephews to buy presents for.

What you really don’t need on top of that are any home disasters that can ruin Christmas.

What am I talking about? Let’s have a look.

Oven broken Christmas Day

Usually, if your oven breaks, it’s a great excuse to go out for dinner or to get a takeaway. But what if your oven breaks on Christmas Day though? It’s not just the turkey that’s stuffed when that happens.

If your oven breaks on Christmas Day, you’ll have to find a generous neighbour to take pity on you and invite you round to eat with them or use their oven.

Alternatively, you can just eat mince pies and chocolate for your Christmas dinner.

Actually, that doesn’t sound too bad to me.

Blocked drains

Blocked drains are a total disaster at Christmas.

Firstly, if you’ve cooked a big roast dinner for a lot of people, there’ll be a ton of washing up piling up in your kitchen and therefore you need the water to be working.

More importantly, you need a functioning toilet if you’ve got friends and family around. You don’t want to be leaving any embarrassing deposits in the bathroom after you’ve been!

So, don’t flush anything you shouldn’t down the toilet, don’t squidge food scraps down the sink, and fingers crossed your drains will be in tip top condition and you won’t need to call out a London drainage company over the festive period.

Christmas tree catching fire

Nothing ruins Christmas more than your house burning down. Fact. Even Santa getting stuck on the M25 and not being able to deliver any presents doesn’t compare.

A house fire is a devastating thing and not just for the house, so make sure yours isn’t one of the many claims insurance companies are swamped with at Christmas due to fires caused by Christmas trees.

Of course, it’s not the actual trees themselves that are causing the fires but the fairy lights people love to adorn them with.

We all love those twinkling lights, but make sure you’ve bought them from a reputable retailer that adheres to all the safety standards. Similarly, if your fairy lights are generations old and have been dragged down once a year from the loft for decades, make sure the wires aren’t frayed or damaged.

A pandemic hits the world

Christmas 2020 in the UK got cancelled at the last minute (thanks, Boris. *eyeroll*). People all over the country were left with empty places at the dinner table and far too much food to eat by themselves.

However, it wasn’t all bad news. Single people with no family who usually suffer extreme loneliness and FOMO at Christmas time didn’t feel so lonely, as everyone was in the same boat (obviously not literally – that would really be going against social-distancing restrictions).

However, fingers crossed we’ll have more freedom this year and won’t have to eat all the chocolate ourselves.

Oh, maybe there is an upside to the pandemic after all.