Santa's Safety Helpers

by The Knoxville Kid
(Knoxville, TN)

Get Safety Tips from Uncle Sam

Here’s an idea for a business that is really needed and one that can help you two different ways. You can charge for your services, or you can give this service as a welcome gift that won’t cost you much at all.

This year people are especially nervous about the safety of toys and other products because there have been so many recalled for different reasons including lead in paints and even toxic drugs in toys. Parents and grandparents are understandably worried about the gifts they give but a lot of them aren’t sure where to get help.

Since you are reading this on the web, you do know how to find things and you can use your skills to really help people have a safer holiday season, as well as at other gift-giving occasions. You will need internet access, and having parental controls should be no problem at all for this information. It would be good to have a printer so that you can download and collect information for your clients.

From each customer, or person you are helping out, get a list of toys, clothing and other items they want to give as gifts, as complete as possible and as specific about brand and model as they can be. Ask for items to be listed that have already been purchased so that they can return them if this is recommended.

There are two simple ways to check out the items. Let’s say the toy was called “Billy Bobcat Forest Set” by “Famous Brand” toy company as an example, but you would use the things on your list. First you can simply enter {“Billy Bobcat Forest Set”, recall} into a search engine and see if anything comes up.

If you do get a recall, copy as much information as you can into a page in Word or the Notepad about the recall and what to do. Use “cut and paste” to make this easy and not have to type as much. You can cut and paste several ways, either by going to the “Edit” menu at the top of your screen and going down to find “copy” or “cut” on the list. First, select what you want to copy by holding down the left mouse button and highlighting the words. Then click on “copy.” (You may want to use “copy” so in the future you don’t erase things you wanted to keep.)

Next, go to your blank page, click there and scroll down that same list to “paste” and click on that to put the copied words on your new page. You can always edit this and change the fonts if you want it to look more professional. Copy the “URL” or address of the pages where you find information also. If the information is really long, you may just want to copy the most important parts and let the person check out the rest on their own.

The most important parts to copy would be the date and exact model of the recall, the reason, and the address, phone number and/or website to contact to get a refund or replacement. If you really want to do a dynamite job, you might look for similar things that are not being recalled.

Another great place to look for this information is a US government website that our taxes provide for us. This is the Consumer Product Safety Commission, found at www.cpsc.gov .
Recalls are found by clicking on the link on the start page or by going directly to http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prerel.html for reports and news by month and by name.

Once you have information about every product you have on your list, or can put “no recalls or issues found” by the items, put it all together and put the pages in a folder or at least use a nice cover sheet with a paper clip. Use your name or whatever you call your own Kidstorming business on that page as well.

About all this costs is some time and some ink and paper and stationery supplies to make the reports. You could do those by hand if you don’t have the use of a printer, but it will take a lot longer. You still want to copy your results onto a page and save a copy in a “Santa’s Safety Helper” folder to keep track of your results. Some toys will be on several lists and you can copy information you already have! Put toy lists in alphabetical order in each report to make browsing them easier.

Even if you don’t do this, check the things people in your family are asking to get and give a report to your parents and grandparents and others. They will really admire your concern.