In this post you’ll learn:
– How to keep your furniture from tipping
– About other child safety devices for your home
As a Philadelphia Eagles fan (womp womp), I’m usually not rooting for a team actually playing in the Super Bowl. I’m more a fan of the spectacle and of course the commercials. This year was sort of a downer in terms of the tone of the commercials, especially the Nationwide Insurance spot with the dead kid. Yikes. Where’s Paul Harvey when you need him?
Years ago, before I had kids, those sorts of messages never resonated with me. I never thought they were depressing. At. All. Wouldn’t of bothered me one bit. After I had my first daughter (I now have three), something inside me flipped like a switch and now that stuff will stick with me for days on end. My wife and I are pretty careful parents, so we take extra measures to make sure our kids are safe in our house. However, no matter how safe I think our home is, seeing images of overturned clothes dressers or flat screen televisions on the floor is pretty disturbing.
The next day or so, I added some more safety devices around our place and I want to show you what we did in hopes of gently reminding you to add your own gear if you have little kids in your house.
The first is the flat screen TV in our family room. It’s not mounted to the wall and even though it’s got a pretty wide base making it hard to tip over, we figured better safe than sorry. We installed these two anti-tipping straps to the back. The get secured to the top of the TV stand. Here’s an Amazon link to the straps if you need them. (affiliate)
If you look closely, you’ll also notice a bracket on the wall. There’s a matching bracket on the stand and between them is a plastic zip tie that keeps the base from tipping over as well. If I ever need to move the stand away from the wall, I just need to take a pair of scissors and cut the zip tie. No big deal. We also used the same bracket setup for all of our girls’ dressers.
Here’s a picture of one installed on the back of a Hemnes:
You need to make sure it gets screwed into the thick part of dresser structure and not just the thin back plane. From the front you can see the thicker wooden strip.
Other than those pieces, we have the standard compliment of baby/toddler proofing devices throughout the home. You can read about that stuff in an earlier post here.
Here’s the basic rundown of the rest of our kid-proofing gear:
1. Cabinet Locks (multiple kinds)
2. Door Knob Covers (great for bathrooms, bedrooms and pantry doors)
3. Gate at the top of the stairs. Gates near the bottom
Our setup has evolved somewhat as they’ve gotten older and it’s still a challenge. It’s just something we need to stay on top of.
If you have any small children in your home, I hope you’re using the necessary safety hardware.
That’s all I have for this week. This weekend I’m going to get started on the medicine cabinet! Thanks!
