How to Effectively Child-Proof your Kitchen

Guest Blogger #301, Entry #842, December 16, 2011

When your little tykes get big enough to crawl, climb, and walk around, you’re going to have to start worrying about a whole new level of dangerous things they can get into, especially in the kitchen.  Just the thought of a toddler rooting through the trash, getting stuck in the fridge, or opening a drawer full of knives is enough to send any parent into panic mode.  Luckily, you’re not the first parent to face these trials and tribulations in the course of child-rearing, so there are plenty of solutions out there for the concerned adult that would like to make the kitchen a safe place for the little ones.  Here are just a few tips to help you do so.

Protect your child in the kitchen

Image via: Smarter

Gates

Baby gates won’t keep your kids out forever, but they’ll work well enough during the stage where anything and everything must be sampled to see if it’s food, or when every door, drawer, and unseen surface that is just within reach (the stovetop, for example) represents an adventure waiting to be discovered.  So until your children are old enough to understand (and heed) you when you warn them that something is dangerous, your best bet to preserve their ongoing health and safety is to keep them far away from the many trouble zones represented in the kitchen.

Height

Your main advantage over your kids, at least when they’re young, is that you have access to overhead spaces that are beyond the grasp of their tiny fingers.  However, you should be aware that some kids are climbers, so although it’s a good idea to put harmful items in the higher cabinets, you may want to secure them against entry, as well.

Latches

While you can certainly keep some hazardous items out of reach in the kitchen, it behooves you to put latches on all doors and drawers (including the fridge), and there are a couple of reasons.  First of all, you can’t possibly store everything out of reach (unless you are okay with the idea of foregoing half of the usable storage space in your kitchen).  This means that potentially hazardous items (cleaning solvents, sharp utensils, and heavy pots and pans, for example) could be on the lower level.  And where would you put the trash?  Since you’ll have to store some items within easy reach of your children, simply secure them with child-proof latches.

Protect small hands with latches and knob covers

Image via: Hello Baby Direct

Locks

Kids are like little velociraptors, constantly testing the defenses.  So eventually they’re going to figure out how even sophisticated latching systems release.  You’d hope by this point they’d be smart enough not to drink the dish soap or pull an iron skillet down on their heads, but since you can’t really be sure of that, you may want to switch to locks on the doors, at least for cabinets that contain the most potentially hazardous items.

Alarms

Okay, so this might seem like overkill, but if your kids are persistent, some kind of closed-circuit alarm system could be necessary to ensure that they’re not breaking and entering in your kitchen cabinets.  If you’re really paranoid (say you have older kids that get left home alone on occasion, and you’re worried about the well-stocked liquor cabinet) you can even get an alarm system that alerts your smart phone when it goes off.  It doesn’t take a specialist in loss control management to know that kids are going to try to get into things they’re not supposed to when your back is turned, so you need to protect them from themselves by any and all means available.

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