14 month old leaving a trail of destruction in her wake ...

[HowManyDucks]

Does anyone have any tips or tricks to deal with this typical toddler behaviour?
I should add DD is great at tidying up and loves to help me tidy. Always puts her dirty washing in the washing basket. Will put things in the toy box when asked etc. However, sometimes no matter what I inevitably end up walking around the flat tidying up one area of carnage to glance up and find she's 'exploring' somewhere else. It's worse when she's tired/bored. It just seems that at the end of the day when I need to tidy up she is worse for it. I caught myself a couple of days ago loosing nearly an hour just tidying up mess she was creating 🤦

I'm by no means a clean/tidy freak but I do have a limit. I'm a solo mum so it's not like I can give her to someone for 15 mins to quickly whip around. Yesterday I looked away for 15 seconds and she was stood behind me brandishing a toilet brush.

How can I take back a teensy bit of control without dampening her curiosity? I like her to explore and do her own thing because we spent the majority of time together doing adult-led activities. I think it's really important to let her have time to discover and make her own fun. But the vicious cycle of tidying for an hour and seeing no benefit it starting to wear on me. So far my solution has been to spend most of the day outside but even then the mornings and evenings can be tricky.

Any tips or advice greatly appreciated.
Ps. I just found my first grey hair 😅

its funny that so often on here people use ‘toddler’ and they mean 3 year old and are babying their child, you’re talking about (I suppose technically a toddler if walking) but I’d just see them as a baby at this age!
id limit what she can pull out and maybe rotate toys. Good to explore but at this age they’ll explore anything and just pull
things out.
I used to have baskets with reach with a mixture of toys/books, you could always change what’s there. If she gets out things that aren’t to be played with I’d just say ‘no’ and redirect

Start early with choose it, use it, put it away! When they are little you do each stage with them and they generally learn not to get everything out!!

Toddler proofing a home is an artform. Anything valuable should be locked away. Anything movable should be placed on high shelves. Pictures should be hung high or removed. Book cases and console tables should be nailed to walls.

Cupboard catches on all cupboards. Makeup and perfume away out of sight or keep in your bag, hung high on a door hook.

My DS went through a stage of dropping things in the loo and laughing so if you don't want to be fishing out your phone or keys, keep the loo door closed.

Even then, toddlers are brilliant at getting in to trouble. After months of careful proofing, I thought I had removed every target. Then I turned my back for two seconds and he got himself jammed in the cat flap trying to escape. 😁

This works when we are playing together. Eg. Close the book when you've finished. Put it away, next book, next toy, back in the box etc. it's more when I'm just trying to whip around and her inner gremlin is unleashed 😅

At this age I used baby gate for the kitchen and made sure the bathroom and toilet doors were kept shut for safety. This left baby proofed safe rooms for exploring.

I set up play areas similar to how nursery did it. I used queen sized flat sheets on the floor and set up play spaces: soft toy area, books, other baby toys etc. I had a child sized table that I covered with a large sheet of paper and secured it with masking tape and introduced drawing with one large black crayon first then eventually introduced primary colours then secondary colours (don’t put an entire pack of crayons out and keep an eye on this activity to redirect away from drawing on walls, furniture etc back to drawing on paper). Also, my baby at that age liked to stand at the table and draw.

At end of day, each play space is easy to pack up quickly by pulling the corners of the sheet together and tying them together so toys etc are contained in the sheet. Then I’d put them into the cupboard ready to be placed on the floor the next day. Makes packing up and setting up activities easier and faster than putting things away in their respective toy boxes/baskets etc. Rotate the activities weekly if needed.