What do I need to know? What did you do, not do? What's essential?
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Essential for us: bolting shelves to the wall, covering electrical sockets, shortening any cords on the blinds to be out of reach.
We did the most on our living room. My goal was to have one room where I could safely leave my child alone for a few minutes. This has truly saved my sanity!
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DD is 15 months and I've only really put up baby gates for stairs and corner bumpers and outlet plugs.
I moved things around in the kitchen cabinets so she's free to open them and play with most of the things in there if she wants.
She's still at an age where we're mostly watching her the whole time so I feel our level of proof has been adequate.
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@snowjewelz: Where did you use corner bumpers?
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@LindsayInNY: Since we're both in NY, I'll share that I used a babyproofing service. They were great. Came with all materials needed and walked the entire apartment. Strapped things to walls that needed it, secured our TV, corner bumpers, replaced outlets with child proof ones (surprisingly fast), cabinet and drawer latches, baby gates, little hinge locks for closets that are off limits...also gave great tips and advice. Like it never occurred to me that my purses with long straps shouldn't be hung on the hooks by the front door as its a strangulation hazard.
Also gave me some tips and a template for babysitter safety/medical information. Tips on how to teach "hot". What are ok as toys and what can cause confusion (for example, you shouldn't let them play with pots and pans because they don't know how to differentiate between them being in a cabinet vs on the stove top).
I found it really useful and it was nice to not have to worry about it. If you want their info, wall me! -
I think childproofing levels really depend on your kiddo. My son is/was into EVERYTHING and there was no telling, redirecting, or anything else that was going to stop him. So we made a PVC pipe baby jail the size of our living room for a while, and then when he turned about 15 months, we let him have access to a largely childproofed house where we could be reasonably sure he wouldn't kill himself. He's 18 months old now and he's starting to climb stuff, which is a whole other thing, but so far our efforts seem to be working.
We put cabinet locks on all the lower cabinets, but they crack open about 2 inches - perfect for little fists to dig into. So after an unfortunate situation where DS pulled out a bag of brown sugar and spilled it all over our kitchen floor, we learned to move stuff in the cabinets around and we even started putting chairs in front of certain cabinets so he really couldn't pry it open.
We put door monkeys on any rooms we didn't want him to access full-stop - our master, DH's office, the coat closet, the laundry room, and the guest bathroom. We put a baby gate on his bedroom door that we usually leave unlocked - he can come and go as he pleases - but if we need to keep him corralled for a few minutes, we can keep him in there. He has free access to the living/kitchen area, the dining room, the formal living room, the hallway, his bedroom, and the guest bedroom.
We moved the coffee table a safe distance away from the couches so that if he were to fall backwards or fall off the couch, he wouldn't slam his head. We have a circular table, so we didn't put anything on it, but if it was rectangular we would have put corner pads on it.
We installed cord winders for our blinds and at this point have had to actually pull our blinds up about half way throughout the house because he's tall enough to mess with them.
We make sure our front door is locked and chained at all times because we have a lever door that he very quickly figured out how to open.
We made a play area for him in the living room with foam padded mats on the floor, plus a cheap Ikea road rug that he can drive cars on. It helps with any falls and easy to clean.
Outlet covers and securing any loose cords (we had to secure the baby monitor cord to the wall and hide other cords like his humidifier and all that behind his dresser). We put locks on the sliding closets in the guest room and DS' bedroom so he wouldn't go ferreting around in there.
If I could change one thing, its that I would have either gotten shorter blackout curtains or installed blackout shades in the 2 bedrooms he has access to. I have floor length curtains in those rooms and he's always messing with them and tugging on them, which creates the hazard of yanking down the curtains or loosening up the rods (he's actually bent one of my rods!) He also has destroyed our vertical blinds, so I wish I had go with shades or something with that.
He's really tall, so we have to keep things out of reach. We don't leave things on our counters or dining table unless its way far back or dead in the center of the table, and we are very mindful of leaving any utensils or sharp items in the sink at all times.
We've had to tape shut the drawer below our oven and the drawers of our washer/dryer stands because he was getting into those, and we also taped our fireplace doors closed because he was trying to get in there too. We've taped shut the drawers on our buffet table with clear packing tape and actually removed our large table top lamps for the time being.
Can you tell we are tired!??!
We don't have any freestanding furniture, but if we did, I suppose we'd have to bolt it to the wall too.
Anyways, hopefully your kid is much better behaved than mine is!
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@LindsayInNY: Really just our TV consoles in the living room and basement.
We strategically move our dining chairs to cover the dinign room corners haha.. The corners are weird and normal bumpers don't really work on them. We also have an ottoman as a coffee table so no issues there.
ETA: She isn't very tall so we haven't had to face the opening door issue yet after seeing gingerbebe's post!
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We only covered the outlets and the fire place surround. I thought it was more important that he learn to respect the living spaces and not treat the house like a jungle gym.
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I agree that it depends on your kiddo, and I'd also add that it depends on age. We found ourselves doing the bare minimum for each age, so ours ended up kind of like this:
~7-8 months (started crawling and pulling up on furniture):
took all the breakables off low shelves and anything heavy/hard off a shelf unit that we couldn't secure to a wall but that was light enough that she could potentially topple
covered the outlets
secured low doors that had anything dangerous in them (like our sink cabinet, with cleaning supplies) and moved anything breakable or dangerous out of her reachWe didn't use corner bumpers, nor did we worry about securing any of our heavy furniture at this time. My kiddo is tiny and she wouldn't have had the strength to pull anything down anyway. And admittedly we were pretty laissez faire about it - ie, I left our pots and pants fully accessible so she could play with them. I wanted her to have as much access to things as possible, without risking harming herself if we weren't minding her carefully. I wasn't terribly worried about her bumping her head on a coffee table or anything.
~15-18 months (walking, able to open drawers and most doors)
added a slip mat to the bathtub (we moved her out of bathing in a laundry bin and into the tub itself)
moved hazardous items in our kitchen drawers out of reach~2.5 years old (proofing her room for big girl bed transition)
secured dresser to her wall - she never attempted to climb or do anything with it, but it was going to be out of site and she's now big enough to pull it down so we did that finally
moved an unsecurable shelf unit out of her room and replaced it with a floor level bookshelf
added covers to some of our folding door closets, which have tools and other stuff I'd rather she not get into, so that she can't open them now that she's tall enough to reach thereThe only hangup I have about babyproofing at this point is our floor lamps, which you can't secure in a pretty way. Thankfully she doesn't seem very interested in them, but it still gives me a little panic.
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@gingerbebe: Goodness, I'm tired for you!
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@looch: this is what we did, just outlets and we bolted one dresser to the wall since it was a tipping hazard. Luckily, we didn't have any stairs to worry about.
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@SweetiePie: I didn't know services were an option! Just looked up a local one and sent it to DH. We haven't done anything and she's getting mobile, and I'm so worried we'll miss something big. Hope this works out, because I'd feel much better!
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@SweetiePie: Never heard of that! Was it expensive?
@gingerbebe: OY! Yeah she's starting to get into things... Just not sure how bad it's going to get. You poor thing!
@looch: That's kinda our approach right now... Trying to get her to respect the house instead of thinking it's a jungle gym. As best as you can with a 9 month old in a two bedroom...
@Mrs. Carrot: I think we need to take a staggered approach as she gets older. I don't want to take precautions that aren't necessary either.
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@LindsayInNY: for everything I named it was $600. So in my opinion it wasn't insane but wasn't cheap.
That includes the "labor" and the materials that they give to (baby gates and stuff).
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