Is your home baby-proof?

[Hobby2014]

Have you got socket covers, corner guards, cupboard/door/draw/fridge locks? Have you got doors in front of DVD player? Put away ornaments/candles?

Or do you just pick baby up and move them back to their toys?

I'd like to not have to do all that, and just keep moving DS away, but don't know if I'm kidding myself. It's going to be relentless isn't it?

He's only 7months atm and rolls or lunges towards things - DVD player for example and I'm just picking him up & putting him back on his playmat.

I'd like him to learn that there's always things around and he can't touch everything he sees (ie in shops, or at other people's houses)

Is it doable?

It will utterly depend on the personality of your baby. My mother likes to tell the story that they never baby proofed for me. Then my brother came along. And within a month of him learning to pull up, they'd had to lash the record player shut with a leather belt!

People who say "Oh, I just say a firm no and they don't" are obviously marvellous parents. But they also have compliant children. You'll hear people say how they can leave X or Y within reach of their kids and they know not to touch. Which is great ,but it doesn't work for every child.

If you are in the UK, socket covers are unnecessary and actually potentially dangerous though. You don't need those. I also think corner guards are pretty unnecessary in most cases unless you have any particularly hazardous height/placed furniture. We've never had any of things you list. We moved candles and ornaments and had an upper stairgate though. And dangerous stuff was in high kitchen cupboards.

We did exactly what you're suggesting for the same reasons. DD1 was a dream. DD2 not so much. But we persevered and I'm pleased we did. I developed a very stern no touching voice and face!

I did move easy access cleaning stuff out of reach though after a near miss!

Good luck.

The best way to baby proof your home is to leave them outside!

I just moved things higher up and put a child lock on the cupboard door in my kitchen that contained all the cleaning bits and bobs

my cleaning stuff is locked away and the scissors are high up. other than that nope. its just common sense.
DD is 14 months and her favourite thing to do at the minute is to run around like a loon with my crutches. she hasnt hurt herself yet. (I fully expect her to hit herself on the head but she always manages to miss)

Thanks for the tips all.
Am hoping it is doable. I suppose I'll just continue what I'm doing and then if it becomes unbearable I'll give in. But hopefully not.
A lock on cleaning cupboard is wise.

A lot depends on the personality of the baby.

We have put a lock on the cupboard we keep our cleaning products in, plus safety gates in strategic places. And we have a playpen to put DS2 in if we have to leave him alone for a few minutes, to stop him getting into mischief.

I did nothing. DD was an absolute liability, so we couldn't leave her unsupervised anyway; this way I didn't have to struggle to get into my own fridge!

We have a stair gate, that is it.

We have a lock on the cleaning cupboard too and have moved vases etc higher up. We are going to move the bookcase out of the living room this weekend so she doesn't pull it onto herself but apart from that we're just carefully supervising. We pop her in the high chair whilst cooking and she likes to watch with his a snack and I take her in the bathroom with me if I go to the loo, she loves to unravel the loo roll!

Depends on child. Ds we just moved stuff out of reach. Dd manged to climb onto the coffee table before she could even walk. She also loved to climb onto the dining table and stand in the middle. I was in the same room, had just turned to fill kettle up.

She could find trouble in a padded cell though

Some bits I did.

Sharp knives out of reach, bleach etc out of reach. Smashy things out of reach.

My parents bought a fire guard.

See how you go I'd have thought.

You shouldn't use socket covers. They were originally developed for the US market where they don't have earth prongs on their plugs; they are actively dangerous with the UK electricity supply. See www.fatallyflawed.org.uk.

We just put a stairgate at the stop of the stairs for my DD.

She never opened cupboards, pulled things off shelves, or touched something she shouldn't - not ever, not once in her life.

I could leave a bottle of bleach on the bathroom floor and she wouldn't even so much as touch it.

I could leave pain killers by my bed and she wouldn't even notice them.

I didn't even have to tell her not to touch, because she never even tried to in the first place.

I've no idea if this is normal or not.

My DS on the other hand is a whole different kettle of fish.

He's obsessed with doors, cupboards, the toilet, the toilet roll, stairs, pulling books off the book case and eating 2 day old leftovers from the bin.

So we've got catches for the kitchen cupboards, stairgates top and bottom, and eyes the back of our heads

If I didn't baby proof ds would surely have ended up in hospital by now. We have a tiny kitchen leading off the large living room so we've baby gated the kitchen door (there's no way he could ever be safe in the kitchen it's just too small) and baby proofed the living room. This hasn't really involved a lot of work though, no plug covers but moved some furniture a bit, made drawers he can open only have dvds/unbreakable stuff in, things like that. The kitchen is the biggie I think though- it's much easier when that's all closed off to him! Just moving them away will become very tiresome very quickly!

My daughter saw "baby proof" as a personal challenge. If things weren't locked they wouldn't hold her attention for long. It took her less than a minute to get one of those plastic cupboard locks open, before she could even walk. We eventually had to use a cable and padlock. We had one room reasonably safe - furniture in front of sockets/cords, etc., and a baby gate keeping her from wandering (she did eventually get this open, but she was a bit older), and a playpen if we had to leave her alone for a minute.
On the plus side, she learned to use the VCR obviously this wasn't recently before she was a year old.

I don't think we've baby proofed no. The only thing we've really done is put stair gates up at bottom and top of stairs - and that was only days after she'd learnt to go up stairs. We've not adjusted anything else.

I live in a tiny flat and there's nowhere that could be sectioned off or made safe enough to leave a toddler unattended for more than a second. All we've done is move medicine into a higher cupboard and elastic banded two cupboard doors together. When he gets too annoying we also tie the kitchen drawer handles together.
He is by no means an un-grabby baby. We have to do a lot of baby moving.

HA! I was bought socket covers and it took DD about 2.5 seconds to get it out! Cleaning stuff is kept it of reach and everything else gets the stern voice.

I just remembered that when my friends and I all had very small children, and would frequently gather at my mum's house, she had a cupboard in her kitchen that was baby friendly. The rest of the house was not particularly baby-proof but we could always direct them to 'their' cupboard to distract them. She kept all the things like tupperware in there. The kids could take everything out and we didn't have to worry about them breaking anything or making too much noise or finding anything dangerous.
Grandmothers have magic.