Your main priority as a parent is making sure your children are happy and well-cared for. To ensure they have this, it is important to make sure your house is a safe haven for your children to grow up in.
Despite the picture-perfect vision of your family home, you need to be aware of how danger can lurk in areas throughout your household, sometimes in places where you may never have thought of.
Consider this list of 7 ways to make your home safer for your children, so that you can provide them with the best quality of living.
The Whole Household
- Lock Away Potentially Toxic Substances
Household items like medications, spray cleaners, alcohol, and laundry detergent are used on a regular basis. It can be tempting to leave them out so that you have access to them at your convenience, but they are consequently in reach of smaller children.
It is important to keep items like these locked in a hard-to-reach cabinet, so your children don’t stumble upon them and ingest them out of curiosity. This also applies to outdoor items like paint, charcoal, pesticides, gasoline, and kerosene, which children could potentially access when playing in the yard or garage.
- Bolt Furniture Down
Children are constantly familiarizing themselves with their environment. This can result in them engaging in potentially dangerous behaviors, like climbing on the furniture. Take measures to properly secure top-heavy furniture and appliances, like bookcases, TVs, and dressers.
Once bolted down it will reduce the chance of the furniture falling, especially if your young child decides to make a climbing frame out of it.
- Install Baby Gates Where Necessary
Try to avoid plastic baby gates, as these can be easily knocked down. Invest in secure, hardware baby gates that will keep your child away from select rooms when needed. For example, a secure baby gate will keep your infant out of the kitchen while food is being cooked, or away from an arts-and-crafts session occurring in the playroom.
The Bathroom
- Install a Toilet Seat Latch
A toilet seat latch will also prevent a curious toddler from playing in an unsanitary toilet bowl and coming into contact with unwanted bacteria. Aside from that, even though it is rare, a filled toilet bowl can present a drowning hazard. Prevent this avoidable occurrence by investing in a toilet seat latch that even the smartest toddler won’t be able to unlock.
- Ensure Your Water Heater is Working
Young children aren’t able to properly communicate any discomfort they are feeling. If you have a newborn, this is an especially ideal time to make sure your water heater and water heater thermostat are in working condition.
While you should always gauge the water’s temperature yourself, getting your water heater and water heater thermostat working properly, or replaced altogether, will prevent your baby’s sensitive skin from scalding or burning at bath time.
Outdoors
- Be Aware of the Plants in Your Yard
Become familiar with the various bushes, trees, plants, and flowers in your yard. Remove the ones that trigger any allergies your children may have, and ones that have sharp thorns or pose other dangers. Know the names of the plants and how to best proceed if your young child eats one of them.
- Get your roof in check
Get in contact with a reliable roofing company that offers the installation or repair of exterior features like soffit. Soffit, and other exterior roofing features will promote ventilation in your attic and prevent the formation of mold and rot, which can be toxic to your children’s health and compromise the structural integrity of your home.
If you haven’t already, be sure to implement these 7 safety tips within your home so you can be at ease and participate in the more exciting parts of parenthood!
