It felt like it took forever for Riley to get moving on her own as she rocked in place for well over a month. Well, right before she turned 9 months, she basically took off like a rocket and has been exploring every little deathtrap in the house since! We’re now at close to 18 months old, and yet again, we’re finding ourselves with daily Amazon purchases aimed at keeping our little one safe. This is our current babyproofing checklist, so far. (I’ll keep updating as we go since we’re taking the babyproof as we go approach, see below)
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Babyproofing Checklist: What Do You Really Need?
For the most part, mom-friends have told me to wait till Riley shows me what to babyproof, but for a while, it meant in almost-daily Amazon orders (you can shop our storefront here). Riley learns something new everyday exploring every room in the house and although she is always supervised, it’s nice to know that there is nothing that will cause her any harm in a quick flash. The best tip we were given was to get down to your child’s level to see what to actually babyproof from their perspective. These are the things we noticed immediately in each room:
Babyproofing Items For Almost Every Room:
Door Stoppers
The rubber knobs/caps on your spring door stoppers can come off and are a major chocking hazard. These solid plastic replacements are easy to swap out and are much safer. We’ve ordered a few more of these, too!
Outlet Plugs
I spent way too much googling and reading reviews for baby proofing outlets, but these are cheap, come in a pack of 24 and are so easy to use. So far, Riley can’t get them off and we really don’t mind the look of them. So glad we didn’t splurge for the fancy ones.
Outlet Covers For Plus In Use
For any outlets in use that your baby has access to should be covered. We have an outlet right next to the crib for the abby monitor so we’ve covered it this highly rated outlet cover. If you can reconfigure the room to hide the outlets behind furniture that would help too but it doesn’t work in her room. We loved this cover so much we’ve ordered two more!
Wall-Mounted Baby Gate for the Top of the Stairs
This one was the best I found and it’s cheaper at Bed, Bath & Beyond (with a coupon, too!), but you can also get it at Indigo (remember to install Honey and you can earn Honey Gold on it, too). I love that it doesn’t have a bar at the bottom that you could trip over, plus it’s dainty enough (but strong enough) to not feel out of place in our house.
Retractable Baby Gates
We needed baby gates for elsewhere in the house like the mudroom (where we have our cat’s litter box and food) and for the bottom of. the stairs. We got these secondhand on Marketplace
Magnet Cabinet Locks
Riley only started exploring cabinets close to 18 months and these are amazing at keeping Riley out of the ‘bad’ cabinets (where we keep the cleaning products etc). They’re ‘hidden’ so you can’t even see that they’re installed which makes for an aesthetically-pleasing toddler-proofed home. We only got two keys, but I wish we had more since we have them installed in three different rooms (kitchen; our bathroom and her bedroom).
Door Straps
We started out with these to prevent the door from slamming into Riley’s fingers, but between 17-18 months it has become her favourite toy (thank goodness they’re non-toxic). We’ve now attached this door strap to the back of the door so we can hook it when it’s open to prevent any accidents.
Front Door Locks
Another new babyproofing (toddler-proofing) item is a door lock for our main door and our mudroom door since Riley is now able to reach the handle and actively tries to open the doors.
Double-sided Tape to secure the floor vents – Riley is obsessed with the air vents in her playroom because it’s right by her toy shelf. We have the plastic ones so they wouldn’t cut her, but we don’t want her falling in the whole (we’ve actually had our cat stuck down one before), nor do we want her throwing toys down it. We’ve decided to tape them down for the meantime.
Cord Covers / Cable Concealer – Riley has found all the cords lying around the house already so it’s kicked our butts into gear to finally get them concealed and taped to the wall.
Anchors for Heavy Furniture – Anchoring furniture is a high priority after reading the stats on how many children die from things falling over onto them. Still on the hunt for the best ones! I’ll report back soon!
Cover Sharp Corners – We’re trying to avoid using these because everyone says they never stay on and leave the sticky adhesive on your furniture, but if you can’t avoid them, you can try these. It’s one thing I wish I had though about when I bought furniture pre-kids, and probably something I’ll think about every time I buy something from now on.
Tip up Blind chords – We’ve got the ones that are attached to the window sill so we didn’t need these.
Note: Put breakable, heavy, or sharp items out of reach in all of these rooms. We did a quick scan and moved anything we noticed. Also, just remember that all toys in the room should be age appropriate.
Babyproof Sidetable (pictured below) – We recently moved out our top-heavy sidetable for this Ikea shelf (box). It’s a great place to put a bottle, my phone and gives us easy access to her books before nap time. Although we would have loved to get an ottoman, the Ikea shelf was definitely more budget-friendly at $20.
Quick Shop:
That’s it For Now!
Obviously, I expect to update this sooner than later. But for now, this is what we’ve done and is working well for us. I am clearing out cabinets in the meantime to move anything breakable, or that could be a chocking hazard either out of reach or into very specific cabinets that will be locked. Planning on ordering these magnetic cabinet locks!
