What necessary but inconvenient things do you do to make your home safe for your children? Share with Fairy Non Bio - £300 voucher to be won

[JustineBMumsnet]

Unassuming things in the home can be a danger to small children, whether it’s food you’d eat yourself without concern, a small step from one room to another or a box of laundry detergent in the cupboard. Fairy Non Bio would like to hear about the necessary but inconvenient things you do to keep your home safe for your children.

Here’s what Fairy Non Bio has to say: “Keeping your home safe from your little explorers can be time consuming, but because of all the chemicals in laundry detergent we want to ensure only mums & dads can access them. With our new Pods Child-Lock pack this can give you extra peace of mind, close with a ‘Click' and store up high behind a closed cupboard.”

Do you have stair gates in every doorway that you curse every time you simply want to carry a cup of tea AND a snack to the sofa? Perhaps you use foam padding on your table corners that your child pulls off thinking it’s a game or have cupboard locks that take ages to undo?

All who post the necessary inconvenient things they do to keep their home safe for their children below will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 voucher for the store of their choice (from a list).

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

Standard Insight Terms and Conditions apply

We have hard flooring at home so we've laid those foam tiles down throughout the house when we have crawling/toddling ones. Useful for exercise too! Most of our house is fairly child-proof now, but when we first started, we picked up cheap furniture from wherever, and the only way we could quickly childproof our TV shelf was to blu-tak a bit of cardboard over the front of the whole thing. We had to take it off every time we wanted to use the DVD player/Xbox.

Cupboard locks and stair gates

Magnetic bloody child locks. I’ve only got them to stop her emptying ALL the cupboards as anything dangerous to her is high up and well out of her way, but MAN is it annoying to have to use a magnet every time I want a pan or a wooden spoon. Not to mention the fact that you instantly forget whereabouts on the cupboard you put the damned things so spend ages playing some weird game of minesweeper with a bloody magnet. I’ve tried all the other ones and they either don’t work on our cupboards or she already knows how to undo them 🙈

cushions on corners but only because he managed to find magic conrers we had fogrtten about!who new the bottom of the banister rail aaargh!

Stair gates - but we've got the ones where they're permanently fixed and they dont have a bit at the bottom...I've tripped over the traditional style stair gates too many times, particularly at the top of stairs! We don't use a lot of childproofing other than that...socket covers are actually more unsafe than leaving sockets and she's a bit of a Houdini with child proofing in general so we just keep things out of the way.

Everything lol I have 3 boys one 18 months I have cupboard locks tv straps table corner covers stair gates safely fireg guard surrounds safety window locks things for blind cords I have the works cause my little boys into every thing and everything needs to be child proof

I cut grapes up but it isn't exactly inconvenient!

Other than that I don't do a huge amount tbh...can't think of anything inconvenient especially!

Furniture tethers. We’ve got hideous huge white plasticky strappy things but the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

A fire guard. Having a cosy, welcoming log fire is great come chilly winter evenings and a fire guard might not be aesthetically pleasing but for peace of mind it is essential.

Doesn't apply as much anymore but used to do the lot, stair gates, cupboard locks, medicines and cleaning stuff out of reach.

Stair gate on the kitchen to keep toddler away from the cleaning cupboard/buttons on the washing machine. All the chest of drawers are attached to the wall (thanks IKEA) and cutting up grapes. We have a climber, he'll pull out the drawers on our kallax unit and climb to the top, so there's no better safety than being right there watching him.

Stair gates & socket covers - annoying but necessary. Safety is way above convenience.

My baby has juat become mobile and with a five year old too Im becoming very aware how many small and non baby friendly things like marbles there are lurking around! I do a five min sweep atounf before putting the baby down to play to make sure the floor is safe for her. I also have installed some high shelves for the tiny toys so my 5 year old can't get them down without me realising.

Locking everything that possibly locks - autitic DS2 is quite the escape artist and fiddlir.

Definitely stair gates! We have taken them off now DS is 2 but it’s left awful damage to the plaster and marks on the woodwork which irks me every time I see it and needs sorted!

The most inconvenient thing was the clips that stopped DD from opening the TV cabinet and pulling all of the DVD's out. It was a pain to open as an adult! The stairgate was necessary, even in a bungalow, to keep her in her bedroom overnight.

All meds were kept up high out of her reach in a locked box. That was a pain when you wanted a paracetamol

Everything like medications, detergents etc up on highest shelves/stuffed into top shelf cupboards so no need to to lock accessible cupboards as nothing of harm in them. No hearth. Had to redo whole room getting that thing out but it was a trip to a&e waiting to happen. Tv fixed to wall, wardrobes etc screwed to walls so they don't topple. We did have stair gates but they've broken and not been replaced. Would probably not use them again actually if I went back and did it all again.

No coffee table, only side-tables with immediate reach.
Dining table has a wipe-clean tablecloth rather than fancy, or even just the bare wood.
All kitchen cupboards, and the fridge, have a lock.
All upstairs doors are locked bar our son's room, even the bathroom (not sure what we'll do when he's ready to toilet train!)
All ornaments absolutely out of reach.
Bookcases, wardrobe fixed to wall so they don't topple.
Front door kept locked with key out of reach.

All pretty standard? Here's the one most won't have - wooden trellis across the lower part of his bedroom window, to dissuade him from climbing onto the window sill and banging on the glass. It's substantial enough to put him off, but weak enough that an adult can break it easily for emergency access.

But then he is 9 years old ... due to his learning difficulties, we've had protective measures in place for 8 years now; and there's no sign of us relaxing such measures yet.

Butterfly Do not use socket covers!
They are incredibly dangerous. Unless you have an incredibly intelligent toddler who could somehow push a thin screwdriver into the top hole and simultaneously fit their finger far enough into the left hole of the socket, there’s no way that they could get a shock.

Definitely stair gates!

We have children with SEN, one of them likes to try and escape so we have special alarms on the front and back doors. They’re very handy but the number of times we forget to disable it when we are purposefully opening the door! The unit that sounds when the alarm is triggered is on the middle floor (town house) so that we can hear it everywhere, this means running back up the stairs to disable it as it keeps beeping and shouting ‘patient wandering’ (!). Which is especially frustrating if you’re actually opening the door to leave, with children, having to then bring everyone back inside which funnily enough, frustrates the kids!

I’m very glad we have them though!

On a simpler note, we have a lot of things stored high up so that they’re out of reach of the kids but DH and I are both fairly short so we’re constantly looking for step stools and the like to reach anything.