Heard a crash coming from my kitchen at night. Here's what I learned.

This happened a couple of months ago but I was recently thinking about it and wanted to share.It was pretty late, around 4am when both me and my wife are woken up by what sounds like a huge crash and glass breaking in the kitchen on the other side of the house.I grabbed my 1911 and told my wife to get her phone and to have 911 ready. We have a 'safe word' of sorts that I'll yell out if the call needs placed.I came out of the bedroom and into the hallway. At the end of the hallway is the living room and to the left of the living room through an entryway is the kitchen. The first thing I did when I got into the hallway was to turn on the light because it was dark.I proceeded straight to the kitchen from the hallway, not checking any of the open rooms along the way and barely clearing the living room.I run a small business from my home and all of my stuff is set up on a table in the kitchen. What happened was that some of the plastic drawers I keep my supplies in had fallen off of the table. The 'glass' sound I heard was ~50 small plastic cosmetic pots hitting the ground.Once I had assessed what happened and that there was no threat I gave my wife the all clear. We cleaned up the mess and went back to bed.Here's what I learned.I should have had my wife just dial 911. Even though it ended up being nothing, if there were actually an intruder I might not have been able to give the signal to call.Gun choice and preparedness. My HD shotgun was in another room at the time because I had been doing some work to it earlier that day. It should have been in my room and loaded as I'm much more comfortable with it than a handgun.I gave away my position immediately when I stepped into the hallway. I should have had a flashlight with me. My HD shotgun has a light attached.Not clearing the other rooms on my way to the kitchen. Pretty self explanatory and it could have been bad.I didn't announce myself the entire time. I still have mixed feelings about this because I don't want to give myself away but if I can scare someone off that's always the better alternative.Not clearing the kitchen entry properly. I came around that corner way too close to the wall. I should have been further away to have a better angle.After everything was over, I noticed my hands were shaking. This happens to me every time I have an adrenaline dump. I'm not sure if the shaking would have affected my shot placement but that's not something I want to risk. I feel like the the affects of the shaking would have been minimized had I been using my shotgun.When we went back to bed I checked my gun. I had the safety on the entire time. In my high-adrenaline state I'm not confident that I would have figured out that my safety was the issue if I had to fire.Things I do differently now.Shotgun stays next to the bed at all times now. I'm also more aware of rooms that I need to clear if the need arises. I've practiced clearing my house several times since then to build that muscle memory of what to do.I also don't keep the safety on my 1911 anymore. I never used to do it and had just started it about 6 months before the incident. No reason to start, just decided to do it one day. I'm not willing to risk that I might forget to flip it off again while disoriented from being woken up to a possible intruder.If you guys have any input please let me know! via /r/CCW https://ift.tt/2IjXTVZ