babyproofing your house

These may seem obvious but:

Blind and curtain cords are a real hazard if they can reach them (choking),
Glass table tops
Drawers/cupboard doors that she can reach and therefore open and close,
Fire/heater blocked off
Steps/stairs blocked off
Heavy objects she may be able to reach and pull off a surface
Always putting pots etc on the back rings on the stove

Other things are just more of a pain than a hazard such as the DVD player etc.

We started using "no" and "mustn't touch" when DS1 started crawling - he learnt quite fast but now as a toddler he is back into all the things like DVD player, TV controls etc!

And just when you think you have totally babyproofed all that you can, you can be sure she will find other mischief that you hadn't even thought of!

Good luck!

wow! It must be sturdy glass. Not sure as we don't have one. You can buy special film that stops it shattering so badly or at least if it does then the shards stick to the coating. When they start cruising furniture then you need to watch she doesn't bang anything too heavy on it. My DS1 loved to bang coasters etc on the table. Thankfully it was wooden and he did more damage to it than it to him!

We've got chemicals and cleaning stuff either locked in the garage or up on high shelves. Washing liquid lives on the kitchen window shelve and jif on the window shelve in the bathroom.

She's only gone near the DVD player once so far first time she heard the word 'NO'.

Need to get a small bin for the kitchen atm we use a plastic supermarket bag on the floor even the cat gets into that.

Has anyone put safety catches on the cupboards? Which ones did you use?

I found explaining (simply) why DD wasnt allowed something she actually cottoned on to what it was very quickly and realises its not for her, like we have the cat and dog food on the floor (all day), we would say, thats the cat/dogs food isnt it Lilla, and now she will pick up a piece and feed the dog/cat!
Weve taken dangerous things away (chemicals) and anything we dont want broken, but other than that have let DD have free rein, so she can explore the cupboards/shelves etc. Wehn they start to be able to open cupboards its like magic! A whole new world opens up, its so cute!!

Emmi_ wrote: Weve taken dangerous things away (chemicals) and anything we dont want broken, but other than that have let DD have free rein, so she can explore the cupboards/shelves etc. Wehn they start to be able to open cupboards its like magic! A whole new world opens up, its so cute!!

We're pretty much the same as Emmi, we only have latches on sink cupboard which has the cleaning products in it. The DVD player and things are all still on the open shelves in the tv unit and he turns his attention to them every now and again but we just repeat the same thing "We don't play with those Noah" when he starts to fiddle.
The fireplace has a surround around it now we're using it but during the summer he was allowed to examine it in the hopes by the time we got to winter it would have lost it's appeal - so far so good (always watch him around it though!)

I like watching him explore the kitchen cupboards, we've had him empty out a whole shelf and climb in recently - makes for great photos :)

We havnt changed anything from our inital babyproof round. DD gets the stairs (she knows to wait for us before she uses them, and I feel like its important for her to know how to use them confidently and safely, after all you have to let them for for it at some stage right?) she has access to the cat and dog food (she knows its for them, she tries to feed them sometimes!).
I feel like its important for them to know why they cant touch stuff (like the pet food being for the pets, not for DD etc) so they actually understand why not rather than just 'no' (which doesnt get said in our house (or very very rarely!)) but thats just us

I can say 'cat food is for puss puss, not for DS' until I'm blue in the face, but DS thinks its a great game to pick each individual biscuit out of the bowl and put them in the water bowl! When I catch him he looks the other way and nudges the bowl with his foot . I think there are some battles you can't win so we've gated off the kitchen!

Amybaby wrote: I can say 'cat food is for puss puss, not for DS' until I'm blue in the face, but DS thinks its a great game to pick each individual biscuit out of the bowl and put them in the water bowl!

Jacob too! And then he'll turn the water bowl upside down to dump the contents everywhere, and lick the bottom Consequently, our cat food is now in a non-reachable place!

I just baby-proofed as I went along. When he was younger and happy in it he had a playpen. Once he got too big for it I took the pieces apart and used them to fence off the bookshelf / catfood / TV / areas with lots of cords.

ETA that so far, the kitchen cupboards are fair game, since there's nothing dangerous in them. In saying that, I'm thinking of changing my mind - the toaster, when it's not in use, lives unplugged on a low shelf. I grabbed it and popped something in the other day, only to notice a funny smell... he's posted a peg in there that had proceeded to melt over everything.

Edited by Hopes

Yeah, my kitchen is off limits more because I don't want him going through everything than for safety! Plus I don't want him walking up to the oven while it's on.

We are a little bit like some of the others in saying that we haven't done much as we want him to learn whats for babies to play with and what is not...actually since he has started crawling, standing up and cruising we haven't changed anything if he touches something he's not meant to he gets a firm "No thank-you, that's not for babies" and then if he persists we just move him...has worked really well so far(of course we get the repeat offending and little tanty that sometimes accompanies this)....I did buy some cupboard latches as I do want to lock the cupboard in the kitchen where all our cleaning stuff is but apart from that I don't see us changing anything else (we don't have stairs)...

My reasoning behind this was so that when we were at someone else's house etc we could use the "No thank-you, that's not for babies" and he would be sweet as you can't expect everyone to have baby proof houses :)

Edited by apriletta