DIY a Stay at Home Dad can do- Babyproofing the house

In a couple of weeks our second child, More Mojo will be here.  As we prepare the infant clothes and get the nursery ready we’re relieved that the house is already babyproofed.  In hindsight it was easy to babyproof; we just didn’t do some of it in a timely manner.  Parents can avoid our mistakes by taking advantage of these helpful hints.

The outlet covers

When Toddler Moro started crawling he was attracted to the electrical outlets.  The outlets were covered with those plastic plugs, which he immediately removed and started sucking.    Mom and dad freaked out, which made him want to take them off even more.

• The plastic plugs are cheap and easy to remove-even for a crawler.  Invest in the slightly more expensive total outlet covers or the plugs that require two fingers to remove it.

Door locks

If you purchase most of the “combo packages” they will not have any of the locks that you’ll need for doors.

• Door locks come in a wide variety of sizes and types.
• Look at each door that you need to secure, measure it and then see which locks will do the job.

We have three different types of door locks in the house, which we still use

 

 

 

 

 

The kitchen cabinets

Every dad knows that they need to put some sort of lock on the kitchen cabinet doors.

• It will take 5 minutes to do each door, do the work ASAP, preferable before the baby arrives.

You will also want to install locks on the drawers when you babyproof.   It may seem like overkill to do the drawers, but before you know it your toddler will be able to open those drawers and get into them.

The baby gate

Regardless of where you need the baby gate there is one characteristic that you want to look for.

• Be certain the gate swings open and doesn’t have a bar or frame that you have to step over.

We had a baby gate with that bar on the floor and tripped on it every time.  After a couple days of that madness we went to the store and purchased a gate which avoided that tripping hazard.

Corner guards

Do you have sharp corners in the home?  It sounds premature to suggest that you put corner guards while you’re preparing for an infant.  However, you’ll be carrying them around, which disturbs your normal routine and distances that you’re used to.  You may also have older children who might bump their head on these corners, either way it’s a good thing to get that out of the way now.

Lastly, you should avoid purchasing one of those safety “combo packages.”  We didn’t use all of the items that were in our package and would’ve been better off going room by room and figuring out what was needed.

As a stay at home dad I miss having the spare time to fix things. Even though the child is my full time job, things still break or need a fix in the house. Sometimes the repair will be something that I can easily complete and other times it’s a repair that I simply should’ve paid to have it done.  Regardless, I’ll write it up here in hopes that you may be able to gauge what you can do and when you need to call in for help. The series is called, DIY a Stay at Home Dad Can Do, but in some cases, you shouldn’t, because of difficulty, time involved or money. All dads aren’t equal. In this case the task is very easy and you can do with little effort.