Wednesday 7 September 2016

Child Proof Your Home for Babies and Toddlers

When it comes to childproofing your home, you will find there is a multitude of safety gadgets on the market for absolutely everything! While installing these safety gadgets all around your home may help reduce the risk of your child injuring themselves, common sense and keeping sight of your little one at all times is the best thing you can do to help protect your little one from hurting themselves around the home. 

In this blog post, we will outline some preventative things you can do inside the house to minimise the risk of your baby or toddler hurting themselves at home.  We have also created a handy printable checklist: Child-proof-your-home which includes an extensive list of things that could be done around the home to make it safer for babies and toddlers.

Electrical Safety  


In every home you will find Electrical Cords and power points in abundance in every room of the house. Appliances such as Lamps, TV, toaster, kettle, electric toothbrushes will all have cords that can be dangerous if in reach of children. For example, if a cord is dangling it could cause your child to pull the appliance onto them, trip on it, or worse get the cord tangled around their neck.

Installing the below two products on all electrical cords and unused Power Points can make a big difference to the safety of your home for children.

Electrical Cord Shorteners reduce the risk of children and other family members tripping on dangling appliance cords.


Electrical Cord Shortener

Outlet Plugs help keep your children safe from electric shock. Simply place the Outlet Plugs into all unused power outlets to prevent curious kids from inserting foreign objects into the source of dangerous electrical currents.

Outlet Plugs


Secure Cupboards drawers and appliances


It is a good idea to secure any cupboards and drawers that contain anything that could be hazardous to your child such as medicines, cleaning products, poisons and sharp objects such as stationary or kitchen utensils.

Cabinet Safety Latch


Also consider using appliance locks on kitchen appliances such as fridge, oven, dishwasher and microwave. 


Appliance safety lock


Windows, Glass Doors and Balconies


It is really important that there is never anything underneath or next to a window or balcony that your child could climb on to. This is to ensure that they can't climb up and fall out of the window or off the balcony.

Make sure you always teach your children to play away from glass doors and windows. You could also consider applying a shatterproof film to glass doors and windows so that if they do break the glass won't shatter everywhere but remain in tact.

To help prevent children from bumping into glass doors and windows you can put stickers on them to help them see them.

Conclusion

In this post we have only briefly touched on a few basic things you can do to help minimise the risk of your child hurting themselves around the home. There are many more things you can do to make your home as safe as possible for your little one. Our extensive child proof your home checklist covers just about everything you can think of to help keep your child safe in your home.

Leave us a Comment

We would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. If you had something in your home that your little one was always getting into or any other safety tips that we haven't mentioned in this blog post or on our checklist we would love to hear from you.

Next Blog Post - October 2016 
In our next blog post we will take a look at beauty and skincare products that are safe for pregnant and breast feeding women to use.


Resources

http://www.bubhub.com.au/hubbub-blog/checklist-for-child-proofing-your-home/
http://www.babycenter.com/0_childproofing-around-the-house_460.bc