This Person Documented Their Unplugged Appliances Before Taking a Trip and It's Kind of Genius
Published Oct. 20 2023, 6:04 p.m. ET
Among all the intrusive thoughts I deal with on a regular basis, one of them involves trying to remember whether or not I did the most important things I should do before leaving the house. Namely, I ask myself if I locked the door, turned the stove off, or performed any other security tasks before stepping out. And even if I check all of those things off and officially leave, alarms will start going off in asking me if I really did do everything I should have before I left.
If I think even for a second that maybe I imagined doing all those things and didn't actually do them, it'll stick in the back of my mind and bother me for the entire trip until I return home. For all intents and purposes, it's a pretty irrational fear, but something I deal with on a daily basis.
To that end, this person on TikTok has an interesting solution. They posted a video documenting all of their unplugged appliances before taking a trip. It may look obsessive, but it's honestly clever!
This person posted a TikTok documenting all of their unplugged appliances.
In mid-October 2023, Kelsointhehouse on TikTok (@kelsointhehouse) aka Kellsie on Instagram posted a video right before taking a long drive. From the get-go, it starts off as one of the most relatable things on the internet.
"I'm documenting this so I don't have have a panic attack and have to drive home," they begin in their 43-second video. Honestly? Super real.
They then go through all of their appliances and plugs in the house to make sure that everything that needs to be off and unplugged is off and unplugged. They even supplement it with video evidence that they can reference once they're out of the house.
Kellsie starts with the oven, confirming that each knob is off. They then move to the air fryer to make sure it's unplugged. They even place the plug far from the outlet to make sure "it can't plug itself in." They even made sure to check that the flat iron that they never use was also unplugged.
Kellsie also checked that they unplugged the vacuums and even doubled back on the kitchen to make sure nothing in there "didn't randomly just turn on."
And just when they were about to leave for their long drive, they decided to check the stove one more time.
Whether you want to call it anxiety or a form of OCD, most people in the comments could relate to what Kellsie did in their video. In fact, many of them admitted to performing their own obsessive habits whenever they step out.
One person commented, "I always look at the burners and say 'off, off, off, off.'"
Another person joked, "You forgot to turn them on and then turn them off so you know they're really off."
Personally, I see this as a nice little trick to keep my anxiety in check over the safety of my house when I'm away. I'm the kind of person who will and has asked a friend to check to see if my front door was locked after I stepped out of the house for two hours. Taking videos like this would be like hard evidence for Future Me to say "hey, you definitely did lock the door and turn off the stove before you left."
But now that you've read this to the end, are you absolutely sure you turned the stove off?