Having your home be a safe and secure place is a genuine psychological need for anyone. If there’re children thrown into the mix, the safety and security a home must provide increases exponentially. In this blog, we will go over childproofing your home and how to do it.
As a parent, you want your home to be a safe and secure place more for your children than for yourself. So how do you do that? The answer is childproofing. If you are unfamiliar with the term, childproofing refers to the act of making sure that places, objects or activities are safe for children.
Understanding what childproofing is, makes up for the easiest part. The more complex one is making your home childproof. To help ease the pain and the hassle of this process we would like to give you some ideas on general childproofing measures and how to apply it to your home.
Childproofing to keep the danger out of reach:
The fact that you need childproofing for your home, means that your kids are still young. Before they outgrow us, it is always a good idea to place things that you don’t want your children holding in high places.
Batteries, keys, pennies, lighter, matches, and so on, stay on the top drawers. Where your kids can’t reach on their own. Use locks, latches, string or anything to lock the lower cabinets around your house.
The worst of all are probably the cleaning detergents and other household items that contain heavy toxins. Always make sure that you place them out of reach and/or locked away.
Childproofing home appliances:
When it comes to home appliances you can do your childproofing based on the appliance. For example, keep the microwave at a higher place, small appliances can be really dangerous if left within the reach of a small child.
They get curious and might move them around, only to have said appliances fall on them. To avoid this, keep small appliances out of reach. Bigger ones like a fridge, stove, dishwasher, can be more tricky to apply childproofing to. Try making the doors hard to open, use magnetic locks, latches, or anything you think will make it hard for your kids to open the doors.
Childproofing your home as a construction:
For this step you will need to view your house as a construction. Think about the design of the house, and what parts of it could be dangerous. First thing that comes to mind are stairs. Use safety gates.
The best ones are ones that children can’t open, but adults pass through with ease. Maybe not all, but some windows around the home could definitely use safety nets.
If there’s a pool, make sure that the pool is surrounded by fences, walls or anything of that nature, and cannot be accessed without the help of an adult. Outlet covers and outlet plates are a must have product when childproofing.
Childproofing certain products:
We already mentioned keeping things like matches, batteries out of reach. The list of products that could be harmful to children is long though and those two barely scratch the surface.
Try using a locked cabinet or drawer in the bathroom to keep medicine, razors, aftershave, or any other harmful thing. Ideally you will need two such locked cabinets/drawers. One for the things we already mentioned, and one for detergents that you would usually keep in the bathroom.
Since we already are in the bathroom, toilet latches come highly recommended. The need for childproofing may arise not only from products that could harm a child, but from products and things that you wouldn’t want your child to ruin. Jewelries and things of that nature are better to be kept in the parents bedroom, and of course, out of reach.
Some other general childproofing tips include: installing Carbon Monoxide alarms, reminding your guests to put the latches back on if they need to open them, cordless window coverings are much safer, anchoring all the heavy objects you can down to the floor, and having the TV mounted to the wall.
The act of childproofing at first might come off as hard work, but it is all worth it. Plus, if you know what you are doing, childproofing can be an easy and rewarding process. Hopefully this will come in handy to you, when time for childproofing knocks on the door of your home.
