In This Post
–Kid’s Bedroom
–Your Living Room
–Staircase
–Your Kitchen
–Bathroom
–Key Takeaways
Having children at home is always a delightful experience, especially when they belong to a very young age group. While they entertain the entire household with their cuteness and innocence, it is the responsibility of the adults to always keep an eye on them even if they are playing indoors. Coming up with a child-friendly home decor may not be enough if you want your kids to stay absolutely safe at home, you should consider childproofing your home. So, if you are also looking for ways to your home safe for children, then this blog has all the information you need.
Here we go!
How to Make Your Home Safe for Children: A Step-By-Step Guide
Every part of your living space has its own dynamics and functionalities. Having said that, if you want to childproof your home or make it safe for young children, then you have to incorporate safety measures in this regard room-by-room. Let’s find out how!
Start with Your Kid’s Bedroom
Along with working on kids’ bedroom decor ideas, make sure the room is also safe for your little ones to be around by following these tips.
- Keep all types of cords required for drapery and blinds out of children’s reach as they can strangle on them.
- Make sure that the storage box where your little ones store their toys does not have a heavy lid that could trap them. You can either Install a safety hinge on that particular box that keeps the lid from closing or entirely remove it.
- Place the bed away from the windows, which is one of the best child safety tips for your home. You can also use bunk beds for space-saving but that is only safe in case you have older kids, not toddlers.
- Make sure that your child’s crib doesn’t have items like toys, pillows, stuffed animals, and loose sheets or blankets. Toddlers can use these items to climb out of the crib. Moreover, having these items around the unattended young children could also pose suffocation hazards. Make sure to get rid of them when working on ways to babyproof your home
- Once your kids are done playing with their toys, ask them to clear the entire floor from toys and store them back. Toys lying on the floor may let your children trip or fall and get injured.
Your Living Room
When working on ways to make your home safe for children, take note of these tips for your living room.
- Keep all the sharp-ends, edges, and corners of your furniture covered if you have young children around so that they don’t get bumped into them and get hurt.
- Most importantly if your kids are of hyperactive nature, use a wall strap for large furniture and other delicate items like TV screens. This will prevent them from banging on the floor even if your kids are messing around with them in your absence.
- In colder weather when you are using heating systems in your home, place barriers around fireplaces and other types of heat sources to keep children safe at home.
- If you are using pedestal fans, never leave them running unattended if you have toddlers at home since they can easily hurt themselves by messing with the fan blades out of curiosity.
- Always keep your sofas, couches, or whatever furniture you have placed in your living room away from windows. It is one of those child safety tips for your home, will prevent children from climbing up on the furniture items and then falling. Make sure you don’t have slippery floors and remove loose rugs if there are any to keep children and elderly household members from falling.
The Staircase
One of the best ways to keep your children safe at home is to childproof your staircase. Here’s how:
- The very first safety precaution you need to take in this regard is to never let the little children at home take the stairs on their own. However, still one of the best tips for childproofing your home suggests to us that we should also make the stairs in our home safe for children.
- While childproofing your staircase, make sure that the steps aren’t too big. This is one of those things that you should take care of amid the designing and construction of stairs.
- The materials used in the formation of steps on the stairs in your home shouldn’t be slippery at all.
- Make sure the staircase in your home doesn’t have any open sides and has robust railings installed all around it.
- You can also install baby gates on the starting and ending points, which is one of the most effective ways to babyproof your home. For more information in this regard, read our detailed guide on how to make stairs in your home safe for children.
Childproof Your Kitchen
If your kids love to be in the kitchen with you, then here’s what you should be doing to keep them safe.
- The kitchen area in your home usually has a lot going round almost the entire day. If your kids also want to help you with cooking and doing the dishes, don’t turn down their offer. Just make sure that you work on all the tips to make your children safe at home.
- Keep knives, scissors, and other sharp utensils, preferably inside a drawer or a cabinet at a substantial height out of your child’s reach.
- Cook on back burners of your cooking units or stoves whenever possible. Make sure that the handles of pots and pans are turned towards the wall not hanging in the air so that children couldn’t get bumped in them.
- Kitchen fires are unpredictable and can trigger anytime so make sure you have a working fire extinguisher in the kitchen.
- One of your kitchen cabinets may have all the toxic household cleaning products, such as bleach, chemical cleaning supplies, medicines, and vitamins. Store them in their original containers with safety guidelines and keep them well hidden from kids at home. Be extra attentive in this regard when working on tips for childproofing your home since you don’t want them to mess around with harsh chemical agents.
- Try to keep all matchboxes and lighters away from children’s reach.
- Don’t use tablecloths and types of plastic or fabric coverings to cover different surfaces in your kitchen. Small hands of your little ones can easily pull dragging all items onto their small heads. This is one of the best ways to keep your kids safe at home. Read our blog for more useful kitchen safety tips.
The Bathroom
Our guide on how to keep children safe at home will be incomplete without discussing the safety measures you need to adopt in the bathroom. So, without any further ado let’s get to them.
- Use non-skid bath mats on the floor to prevent falls. You can also choose a non-slippery bathroom flooring as there are a variety of bathroom flooring options available in Pakistan
- Following the tips to childproof your home, If possible, store all your medicinal drugs and cosmetics in locked cabinets or containers away from children.
- When childproofing your home, you have to be completely focused on each and every bit. For instance, to prevent incidents like drowning, never leave young children alone in the bathroom.
- Pay extra attention especially when they’re in the bathtub or shower. Never leave a child alone near the water and always drain the sink or tub once your kids are done using them. Since children’s skin is very sensitive to heat and can burn easily make sure the water doesn’t get too warm that it could hurt them.
- While working on ways to keep your kids safe at home, don’t forget to install toilet seat locks. It will prevent small children from drowning.
Some Key Takeaways Regarding Tips to Childproof Your Home
Before we wrap our post on how to make your home safe for children, we would like to list down and discuss some general tips in this regard.
- The best way to look for the safety hazards from your child’s viewpoint around your home is to get down on your hands and knees and start looking around. We bet you’ll surely discover a lot of things that your little ones may want to explore
- Cover all the unused electrical outlets with plug protectors.
- Keep your electrical appliances unplugged when they are not in use and never keep them running unattended if children are around.
- One of the best tips on how to keep children safe at home is to make sure that you have no bare electrical cords running on the floor. Well, if it’s very necessary to have electrical cords in your home, then try to hide them underneath rugs.
- Keep rooms plastic bags, balloons, chemical products and other items posing a choking and health hazard.
- Lock your windows or use stops so that they won’t open more than a few inches.
- Try to empty buckets all the buckets around your home when not in use by turning them over. Even one extra inch of water can pose a serious drowning threat to young children and toddlers.
Here we’ll wrap our detailed guide to childproofing your home. If you think we have missed out on mentioning anything important in the blog, do notify us about it by sending us your feedback at blog@zameen.com. You can always interact with us and share your suggestions.
On a side note, you may also be interested in reading about home electrical safety tips, ways to soundproof your home and some interesting activities to keep toddlers busy at home.
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