Is your little one fast asleep?

Great, let’s play the baby proofing game. Get down on the ground, sit or lie down if you can. Now look at the room you’re in from this new perspective. Are there lots of interesting things on the ground? If you needed to pull yourself up right now, what’s handy? What’s small enough to put in your mouth? What’s big enough to get your hand into? What else do you see from your baby’s vantage?

What needs Baby Proofing?

It’s important to be through on baby proofing your home to ensure it’s a safe environment for your toddler to explore. While your baby is gearing up to go mobile, Odd Job can help make your home safer by:

• Installing safety latches on kitchen and bathroom cabinets and drawers to keep children from exploring. This will prevent them from finding potentially poisonous household products, kitchen and bathroom appliances, knives, etc. Consider adding drawer locks in a home office as well.
• Securing all bookcases, shelving, and heavy furniture to walls with brackets and anchors to prevent it from tipping over. Toddlers learning to stand and walk tend to pull themselves up by whatever they can grab, so make sure that what they reach for won’t come tumbling down on them. When storing items, put heavier items on bottom shelves and in bottom drawers for stability.
• Installing locks to chest freezers and any extra refrigerators to prevent children from exploring and getting trapped.
• Installing door closers on doors that lead to basements, garages, pools and other hazard rooms. This will close the door behind you, even if you have your hands full.
• Installing or repairing a fence and gates to enclose your yard and keep your kids safely at home.
• Installing toilet locks to keep toilet lids closed. Children are more top-heavy than adults and can lean and fall into a toilet easily. They also can drown in just one inch of water.
• Upgrading electrical outlets near water sources to those with ground fault circuit interrupters (GFCIs), which turn off electricity if appliances fall into water.
• Installing safety gates at the top and bottom of stairs and in the doorways of rooms with hazards. While gates with expanding pressure bars are great for doorways, they should not be used for blocking stairs.
• Installing corner and edge bumpers on furniture and other items like a fireplace hearth to protect against injury.
• Replacing old windows or adding stops to the frame so that the window cannot be opened wide enough for a child to fall through.
• Replacing any old or broken blinds, shades, and draperies. Install blinds that lock when fully up or down and avoid looped pull cords as they can be a strangulation hazard.

If it’s time to any of these or any other baby proofing upgrades to your home, contact Odd Job and get an estimate. We look forward to working with you.