A few weeks back I was sorting clothes in the laundry room (approximately 4-8 steps away from the kitchen) when I “heard” silence. I quickly ran to the kitchen to find this:
That’s my precious (then) almost-two-year-old son sampling suckers from the pantry. Yes, a professionally child-proofed pantry. We decided to have our entire home childproofed after this incident a couple years back with my oldest:
If it was childproofed, how did that happen? Well, make that another note to self: always lock the pantry door!
If you’re looking for home-safety solutions, I highly recommend this two-way door lock. It’s fantastic (as long as I remember to lock it). We have these installed on our pantry, office and laundry room doors. I find it especially beneficial that the door can be locked or unlocked from both sides. Also, since the latch is installed at the door top, it works for older kids, too.
My other favorite childproofing solution is magnetic locks on all our lower kitchen cabinets. We tried the traditional cabinet peg lock, but my son learned to unlatch the peg within hours of its installation (which was about how long it took my husband to install one of them: cue professional childproofers). Even though my oldest (4 years) now knows how to unlock the magnetic doors, we keep the magnet keys out of reach, so it’s not a problem. One of the best features of this lock is that the latch can be easily disabled and re-enabled. When I’m doing a lot of cooking, I’ll unlock my frequently used cabinets while I’m in the kitchen. And since autumn officially begins THIS WEEK, I have a feeling I’ll be keeping some cabinets unlocked soon for some serious baking!
But he looks so cute and happy after tasting all the suckers he wanted!