Ever had to get up in the middle of the night and then run into a chair leg or trip over something that you forgot was sitting on the floor? Here are a few ideas on how to lessen that inconvenience. Ideally, you want to wake up from a sound sleep and be able to easily move around in your own home without having to turn on any lights, because those lights are going to illuminate you but may not illuminate anything or anyone that’s a possible problem. One thing that helps is to get in the habit of having everything in its place, in the same place, before you retire for the evening.
 

We had this forced on us because one of our dogs is blind. She can navigate around the house quite well, unless we leave a chair out of place. Since we don’t want her crashing into things, we have learned to keep everything where it belongs. This has been a learning experience, because one night, I realized I could easily walk through the house in virtually complete darkness. I say “virtually” because in most homes, various devices will give off some light, an alarm clock for example. So, keep things in their place and you’ll have less to crash into.

Spend a bit of time during the day keeping track of how many steps it takes you to go from one point to the other inside your home, and look for things that can help guide you around. If it takes you putting a couple of your fingers on the edge of a dresser so you will know when to turn or when to reach for a doorway, then that piece of furniture is one of your guides. You’ll probably find that you already know how to move around “blind.” You’ve just never really thought about it.

If you have a lot of space in your home, consider some of the little five watt night lights and place them near the entry doors. That will give you a point of focus from where you are, which is presumably in darkness and not near the doors. Skip this if your bedroom opens right at your front door, of course, but do try to place a couple where they’ll help you. The big fancy tactical lights are great, but turning one on in your dark home can momentarily blind you as well as your target, since so much light is being reflected back at you from your interior walls.
 

You have a giant advantage in your home because you know it and others do not. You want to take full advantage of that if you need to be moving around looking for a possible threat. Ideally, you want to completely surprise a threat and then hold that advantage as you take care of the problem. But, until you know what the problem is, you don’t want to be moving blind, of course. And, by using only ambient light, you have the opportunity to find out just exactly why your dog is always barking at 2:23 a.m. It may be that’s when Mr. Raccoon always stops to peek in the window. Turning on 10,000 watts worth of floodlights is going to run Mr. Raccoon off long before you get to see him. There’s a time for the big lights and I’ll get to that in the future. Meanwhile, ambient light, you see Mr. Raccoon, who’s no threat. And, you haven’t damaged yourself by tripping over something and falling down the stairs or broken up the furnishings by falling into them.