Whether you’re building your own home from scratch or simply attempting to renovate a used home to make it kid-friendly, you’ve come to the right place for help.
Keep in mind that a child-friendly house isn’t necessarily a home that has been danger-proofed. In most cases, homes that are kid-friendly are easy to clean, hard to stain and keep kids away from areas of places they live so they don’t get into things that could harm them or something else.
1. Anchor glass, ceramic, and other heavy items
Anchoring things inside a home refer to securing them to the objects they rest on. Objects that are properly anchored to the surfaces they’re on top of are significantly less likely to take a tumble.
Depending on the many variables involved, these potential tumbles couldn’t harm anything, though they could potentially hit nearby children and harm them directly. Further, some objects could break once they hit the floor or another solid, flat object. Shards of glass, porcelain, and other similar materials could be stepped on, chewed on, fell on if your home’s objects aren’t anchored properly.
2. Make sure your medicine cabinet isn’t going anywhere
Most people store medications from past prescriptions in their medicine cabinets. As you already know, many of these medicines could likely kill a child with just a few tablets. Since keeping firm control over where your medicine is stockpiled is so important to keep kids safe, you have no excuse to refrain from securely affixing your medicine cabinet to your wall studs.
First, take the medicine cabinet off of your bathroom wall. Next, use a stud finder to locate the wall’s studs, which are sturdy pieces of wood used to hold things up. Use a drill to drill at least six screws through the back of your medicine cabinet and into those studs. If you miss the studs, the medicine cabinet won’t have anything to stick to – don’t forget!
If done correctly, your little ones won’t ever be able to pull medicine cabinets down.
3. Build a barrier all the way around your home
You know how children are – they often wander aimlessly, only realizing that their parents aren’t anywhere to be found after they’ve lost themselves. To prevent your kids from running away or – even worse – getting involved in some kind of motor vehicle accident, make sure to erect a very sturdy fence around the perimeter of your property. Also, it might be a good idea to erect another fence around your pool, if you have one. Now, it sounds like you’ve achieved a truly child-friendly home design.
4. Give kids a space of their own
You don’t have to give them lots of space, necessarily, though you definitely should provide them with a countertop, table, or entire room so they have a dedicated space to do their own thing without getting interrupted.
More importantly, don’t forget to provide play spaces to kids keeps them entertained. Creating a child-friendly garden is also a good idea as it provides your kids an opportunity to explore the world outside of the house and do some activities outdoors.
5. Bathrooms with tiled walls make life easier
Children find a way to make all four walls and the floor dirty everywhere they go. This near-fact of life is even truer in the bathroom. Many bathrooms only have tiled floors, though tiled walls are the way to go if you’re interested in crafting a kid-friendly house.
Tiles are infinitely easier to clean than other building materials. They’re also many times less porous and less likely to harbour microbes, bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms that could prove to be harmful if ingested by children.
6. Opt for carpet tiles for easy cleaning
You can’t remove a full-fledged carpet every time your kids spill something on it. However, you can remove carpet tiles in such situations and clean them at will. Putting those back into place can be done without any hassles.
Carpet tiles are also incredibly easy to install and they require little to no professional help.
7. Choose rounded furniture
Even if your family live in a spacious house, your children or even you will find a corner to bump into one day. Try to minimize the chance by choosing each piece of your furniture carefully.
By choosing furniture that is rounded, with no sharp corners, you mitigate the damage to your children’s heads or sides. You don’t have to sacrifice the look and be less stylish or creative, there are so many good-looking pieces too choose these days.
My kids have their own play space and bathroom. Keeps me and hubby sane and the rest of the house beautifuk!!