Funny, how I've gone through my entire life using this appliance and never thought to unplug it when I wasn't using it. But, like they say, you learn something new every day.

This family in Glyndon, Minnesota found this out the hard way. According to Valley News Live,  a mother in Glyndon, a small town about 12 miles east of Moorhead, Minnesota, was outside with her kids when she heard the faint sounds of her smoke alarms beeping inside the house.

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She was lucky enough to be able to get her pets outside in time but the kitchen was pretty much totaled. Unfortunately, the rest of the house and most everything in it suffered a lot of smoke damage.

“We had an extension port on there that had six outlets on it and so we had the toaster along with four other things plugged in there,” said the mother, “the fire marshal told us that toasters are known to just go up in flames and short circuit so every time I go to someone’s house now, I’m unplugging their toasters like ‘PSA’.”

The fire is still being investigated but it looks like the toaster in the cause of the fire. Evidently, you are supposed to unplug your toaster when you are not using it. Who knew?  I had never heard of that before. According to Cnet, a toaster that's plugged in can just catch fire.  Even new toasters need to be unplugged when not in use.

Just check out the instructions on some new toasters (who reads instructions?) and they'll tell you to unplug the toaster when not in use. Although it's rare, toasters can sometimes malfunction and cause the heating elements to fire up.

We're happy that everyone is okay and their 2 dogs are all safe and from now on I will always unplug my toaster when not in use.

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