If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time worrying about all the ways your home could literally disappear. Fire, for example, is incredibly efficient at transforming your cozy home from the place where you play video games and make bad diet decisions into a smoldering pile of insurance claims. And house fires aren’t exactly uncommon: In 2022, there were more than 374,000 home fires in the U.S. alone. Wildfires are always in the news—and they’re getting worse (thanks, climate change!)—but you don’t need one to see your house go up in smoke: Nearly half of home fires start in the kitchen.

The good news is that there are some fairly simple — and very affordable — steps you can take to make your home more fire safe, no matter how old it is, where it’s located, or how it was designed and built. By adding these components gradually, you can keep costs manageable while slowly reducing your risk of fire.

Fire needs fuel to burn, and your home is basically made of fuel. Almost everything in a home, especially a wood frame home, will burn happily once a fire is started.

Paint. An inexpensive way to at least slow down a fire is to use fire retardant paint. These paints are usually what is known as “intumescent paint.” They work by forming a protective layer (or “carbon”) over their surface when they come into contact with flames. This protective layer prevents the fire from spreading, at least for a while. If you are going to paint your house anyway, you can easily use fire retardant paint and make the area more fire safe at the same time.