10 Practical Ways to Baby Proof Your Small Apartment

When expecting, you can’t help but prepare everything for the baby’s arrival. Even before the birth date, you buy clothes, furniture, and items for your little bundle of joy. Of course, you want what’s best for your baby! 

As time passes, they grow and learn more skills. Seeing them develop from crawling to walking on their own is rewarding. 

Your child will start to explore more of the surroundings. At this point, even taking your eyes off them for a second can be dangerous. Look around. Can you see things that may hurt your precious child?

According to the CDC, one of the leading causes of death for infants is unintentional injury. Yearly, around 328,500 infants at the age of 0-12 months get rushed to the emergency department. 

It’s a heart-breaking fact that you can avoid from happening to your child. I’m sure that as much as we want them to be happy, we also want our baby to be safe.  

Have you ever heard of baby-proofing your home? 

Identifying potential hazards prevents accidents from happening. Not only are we talking about chemicals or sharp objects, but even your everyday things can hurt them.

Take another look around and look a little bit closer. Didn’t that table edge hurt when you didn’t mean to hit your leg on it? Now imagine being the one crawling and bumping your head on that. What more if you still have a developing skull like that of your child. Ouch! 

Let me help you by pointing out several ways to baby-proof your home. So here are some tips to keep your little loved one safe:

Open Doors? Close the Gates 

We all have places in our house that we don’t want our children wandering within. It could be rooms with essential items or rooms without baby-proofing. Especially if you have stairs, that would be dangerous.

For places like that, we can use a baby gate to limit where our kids can go. This gate helps keep them from leaving out a room or going to areas we don’t want them to. Install this in doorways or before staircases, and it’s ready to serve its purpose. 

Caution: Corners 

Sharp corners of different furniture can be risky for your toddling child. Not only can it bruise our baby, but it can also be more dangerous than that. We can prevent them from getting hurt on these edges by applying corner guards. 

By the way, no need to worry about your furniture looking unattractive. Corner guards come in different styles and colors. They’re even removable!

A Turn They Can’t Make 

As our curious babies grow, they will soon learn how to turn knobs. Though you have a small apartment like in Alveo Alabang, there will be lots of doorknobs or even stove knobs. This can cause many problems once they know how to open doors or, worse, open stoves. Knob covers aim to prevent that from happening. With this, you can only turn it with the proper grip that we, as adults, can do. 

Easy Access

I’m sure you’ve seen videos of kids climbing cabinets or bookcases. Most likely, they’re trying to get something that caught their attention. To lessen the chances of that happening, keep stuffed animals and toys within their reach. Remember to put them somewhere at the eye-level of a baby.

Can’t Touch, Won’t Touch 

There are a lot of things that we don’t want our babies getting a hold of. I’m talking about chemicals, medicines, or sharp pointy objects. As much as possible, we should keep these items out of their reach. Put them high up on the wall cabinets or inside rooms they don’t have access to. Of course, if they can’t see it, they won’t get it!

Lock It Up 

Some dangerous things for them can be important in our daily lives. Cleaning chemicals, for example, are usually hidden underneath the sink, inside a cabinet. Instead, we can make sure that our child can’t open that cabinet to access the item. We can use cabinet safety latches or locks for situations like this. 

There are several types you can choose from, and the way you open them varies. It can be as easy as pressing, turning, or lifting a latch. And there are also more complicated ones that you can open by key or combination of numbers. 

Won’t Catch Them Tripping

Electrical cords can be dangerous in a lot of ways. Kids can trip and fall over these cords. Even more terrifying, they can get strangled or electrocuted by this. We can avoid this using several ways. All we need is your organizational skill. 

Items such as cord shorteners can help you store excess long cords inside. There are also cord protectors that prevent exposing the wirings inside. The most secure way is to adhere the long cord across the wall or floor of the room. This will take more effort but keeping them safe is worth it!

Shockingly Safe

Electrical outlets are usually around a baby’s eye-level. Our curious little ones will most likely find these tempting to play with. The easiest way to protect them is to use an outlet cover.

Different designs with varying security levels are available to choose from. It ranges from plastic plug-ins to outlet boxes that can cover the whole thing. 

The Harder They Fall

Heavy items such as bookshelves, dressers, and appliances can fall over your child. For example, even a tiny tug on the table can knock over your television. The best thing you can do is mount them on the wall. Make sure that you won’t have to buy a new TV, and above all, your baby is safe. 

Zero Fall Damage

Most of the time, your toddler will be exploring the floors of your place. A clean, soft carpet will keep them safe from hard surfaces as they crawl. As they learn how to walk, they also can’t help but stumble and fall. Having soft protection will make sure that they won’t get hurt during the learning process.

At this stage, our adorable babies can only depend on us. Child injury is real, and you can avoid it from happening. You may not have the luxury to find a more spacious property for rent, but you can still do baby-proofing.

Baby-proofing can take extra money and effort, but it will all be worth it as you see your baby grow up healthy and safe!