Small kids and power tools? Sounds like a recipe for disaster. Luckily, most of us are used to potentially dangerous machinery and even the little ones are well aware of what is ok to do and what not.
Still, sawing garbage wood to small pieces can is quite the adventure. Everyone is severely noise sensitive, so ear muffs are a must. Some are allergic to molds, so respirator is a must, protective goggles are a good idea anyways when working with a table saw, and almost everyone is mortally afraid of spiders, so we need gloves and clothes that don't leave much room for anything to crawl in.
Dressed up as if we're getting ready to embark on a vacation trip to the moon we check out the work space. How much room is there between the garbage pile and the saw? How big is the body? How long are the boards? The kids' body perception is skewed, they still think they are way smaller than the body actually is. That's not so much a problem when we hit (again) our head on the bathroom vanity, but with cutting tools I prefer they know where all the important body parts are (and I'd appreciate it if they stayed where they are, thank you very much).
The work itself needs to go slowly and with full concentration. That is astonishingly hard when doing something that doesn't need to be neat or needs terribly much attention to detail. When building furniture it's so much easier to stay fully awake. But cutting up garbage? So tempting to drift away and just let everything run on autopilot.
That is pretty dangerous though. If someone suddenly saw a spider and tried to jerk away that could easily end with our hand in the saw. Every moment needs to be fully controlled. That's exceedingly exhausting. It's not one adult doing some dirty, uncomfortable work, it's an adult doing this while watching half a kindergarten class prone to hysteric fits.
The slight extra force needed to breathe through the respirator is triggering, the smells, the heat, the creepy crawlies... it all adds to the stress and needs to be suppressed to even be able to do the job.
In total it means an hour of this is demanding enough that for the rest of the day I'm groggy and not up to anything anymore. This is one job, one small point on the list of all the things that need to get done, most others aren't quite this intense, but very few ever go without any such complications.
We do get stuff done, slowly. It's hard though when we get compared to "normal" people. And yes, I am jealous at times, I want to be able to do something quickly and effortlessly too. Like "normal" people. But then I'd also be alone in my head, like "normal" people, and no, I'd miss the crazy family in here far too much.
