Modern Mom’s Home Safety Guide
Having a baby is daunting for any mom. Whether you are a first-time mom or have several children, it is so important to reevaluate your home safety often. My oldest is 6-years old and when I was pregnant with him, I received so much advice, which was wonderful because I truly believe that you can learn so much from other moms. However, we have to keep in mind that the world we live in is a completely different place than it was when our moms were raising us. Even many resources and books are outdated when it comes to new dangers that we must be wary of when safeguarding our home for our children. Have you ever heard someone mention the laundry room as a potentially dangerous area of the home? What about tv screens? Luckily for us, Tide has teamed up with BabyCenter to help us moms keep our babies safe!
I received compensation and samples for this post. All ideas and opinions are my own.
We have all heard the standard baby safeguards: block electrical outlets, keep cleaning supplies out of reach, and have a gate and the top and the bottom of the stairs. But in today’s modern homes, there are so many potential hazards that are specific to today’s parents that have been left out of warnings. Until now.
With this updated childproofing checklist, we can finally get this vital information into the hands of parents, babysitters, grandparents, and anyone else with kids in their homes. Batteries and charging cords pose a huge danger to kids, yet they are something our parents didn’t really need to consider when we were growing up.
But parents need to adapt to changing times. For example, in my home, we used to keep our chargers all plugged into a charging strip hidden away beside the couch, but now I realize that that is not enough so we created this little charging station in our kitchen that is up and out of reach. It only took a few minutes to make this change, and I feel so much better knowing our home is a little bit safer.
Over the past year, as a member of the Tide’s Fabric Care Advisory Board, I have been a part of Tide’s effort to raise awareness of laundry room safety. This is really important because one of the most overlooked spaces in your home when it comes to childproofing is the laundry room. Check out these statistics:
- 1 in 3 parents say their laundry room is located near spaces where the family spends most of their time such as the kitchen and living/family room.
- Only 17% of laundry packet purchasers consider laundry packets a top 3 safety concern
- Just 29% of parents have safeguarded or plan to safeguard the laundry room
- 1 in 5 parents say their laundry packets are in within reach or sight of their child
This quick fix will take you five minutes and will help keep your little ones protected: Walk into your laundry room, make sure your laundry packets are up, closed, and safe. That means they are out of reach and still secure in their original packaging from the manufacturer. Tide goes out of their way to make sure their packaging is designed with safety in mind, like their child-resistant tub, or their pouch which features a new Child-Guard™ Zipper. Even with these extra precautions, parents still need keep them up, closed and completely out of reach. For more information on safety visit Tide.com/safety.
I found this so useful since my son is very curious. He touches everything! I also have a 4 month old daughter so the security and safety should be doubled. Great post! I’ll be trying some of the things I learned here.
This is a nice post. Besides parents, grandparents and aunts/uncles may need to do this if they have the kids over a lot. Things have changed with objects like chargers etc. One of my tips is if you have an animal or a relative does, make sure things are safe. Do NOT leave the child unattended. Kids pull ears/tails and things happen.
These are all great tips. I am going to pass this on!
PLEASE add the most important safety tip: you MUST secure all bookcases, stands, dressers etc to the wall. Children try to climb them, the item tips over, and they are crushed to death. And it’s 100% preventable, so PLEASE secure your furniture!
These are good ideas for Moms and Dads to check. There are so many things that can go wrong.
My cousin’s daughter is 7 months now and will be mobile soon. I will pass this along to her.
Even though my children are older I still keep my laundry supplies up on a shelf above the washer and dryer. Even since my kids were younger there are more dangers now.
Honestly I never thought about securing my laundry pods. This is a good reminder, thank you! I’m glad Tide has provided safety measures with theirs!
Great tips. Thanks!
I have four kids so I’m all about safety. It’s impossible to keep your eyes on all 4 kids at every moment. All great info!
I was so paranoid when our kids were really young. We had one, and then had twins so making sure every room was “baby proofed” was a must. I think my kids were actually a bit older before I actually started taking down some of the baby proofing! lol This is a really good post for new parents!
We had twins…. what an adventure it was to babyproof. We actually didn’t do a ton of extra things I just made sure to watch things they went towards and then babyproof only where I had to.
It is ironic to me that a lot of people keep household cleaners in a safe place yet they don’t consider laundry gel packs as a household cleaner. That is really astonishing to me.
Home safety is a never ending job with kids. New hazard come with every age it seems!
I think it’s great that Tide made these new safer packages to keep kids out of them. There are so many things to think about when baby proofing the home and I think that the laundry room often gets missed.
Child proofing is such an important project that every new parent needs to consider when having a baby. Thanks so much for putting together such an easy to follow guide to help all those newbie moms and dads out to keep their kids safe.
I am going to get down on my kids level tonight to see if I can spot any dangers. The laundry room can be such a dangerous place.
We have a new baby in the family who is starting to crawl. This is perfect information to share with her.
I think it’s so crazy everything that us moms have to worry about! I do agree with using the back burners though when cooking…it’s saved me many times.
My sister-in-law and my brother just had their second baby. Their first one is a toddler and I think baby proofing the house is high on their list. I’m going to tell them about this post because there’s a lot of good information here.