How to secure furniture to wall when renting?

[Jennlx]

We're renting at the moment and have a 5-month old baby. We're hoping to secure our larger furniture to the walls so that they won't collapse on him if he tries to climb them when he's older and running around. Has anyone any ideas of suggestions of how we do this, keeping in mind that we're renting and therefore are not able to drill holes in the walls etc. Thanks!

We've always hoped for the best. No-one secured anything to the wall when we were kids...

We survived (not that I know any official stats about how many children were injured...)

Personally I would wait and see if he turns out to be he sort of child who likes to climb things first. He's only 5mo so you've got a good few months before he's even going to start trying anything like that.

I have 3 dcs and we have never secured any of our furniture to the walls and they haven't been squashed yet .

IMO it's easy to get worried about these things with your first because there are so many companies scaremongering, out to get your money-- selling safety items but so much of it is entirely unnecessary.

By dc3 we didn't even have a stairgate because the older 2 left it open permanently so there was no point in it being up. Our stairs are incredibly steep victorian stairs and dc3 was scooting up and down them as soon as he could crawl. Ironically, the only time he fell down them was when the stairgate at the top was shut and he tried to wriggle underneath it. I left it open after that!

Honestly, leave it until you know whether he's going to be a budding mountaineer because the chances are you won't need to do anything.

we never did this - tbh when they are of an age when they are both capable of climbing book shelves and unable to comprehend that it's not allowed you won't be able to let him/her out of your sight anyway - even if you did secure the furniture. You won't be able to remove all the risks - so for a short-ish period the only real security comes from your eagle eyes.

Thanks for your replies - do agree completely and wholeheartedly. I grew up with my 4 housewrecking siblings and somehow we escaped injury...these 'child safety' packs you can buy were a complete revelation to me when I saw them, never even knew there was such a market! I only started thinking about this when on the Ikea website to buy a Billy bookcase, and it said that it must be secured to the wall...which let to Googling, and you know the rest. I have always just put the most heaviest books on the bottom of bookcases to stablise them...

We had 2 Billy bookcases in our playroom with all the dcs' toys on and neither of them ever tipped or even wobbled! Dd used to stand on the 1 up from bottom shelf to reach something higher up and they still stayed upright. I think Ikea are just covering their backs against the compensation loons.

With Billys, we secured them to each other (in an L shape) so they couldn't tip.
We also had a Malm chest of drawers though, that did tip forward if you opened all the drawers at once - we asked our landlord and he agreed that we could drill a hole as long as we polyfillered it when we moved out. He also let us put up a few picture hooks and childproofing in the kitchen - worth asking if you don't know for sure that drilling holes is verboten. OUr letting agents said no at first, but asking the landlord directly got us further...