Popular Articles: |
Safety 1st Grip N Twist Door Knob Covers |
Here's a Frugal Tip: Cover your door knobs with a sock, wrapping an elastic around the base of the handle to hold it in place. You can squeeze, and get a grip enough to turn the handle, but your child's hands are too small.
Here's a Frugal Tip: When we didn't have any door handles on our door handles on our lower kitchen cabinets, I just hooked a bungee cord
from the door at one end, across the front of all the cabinet doors, to the door at the other end. Josh couldn't get in!
Here's a Frugal Tip: To prevent your toddler from unrolling the entire roll of toilet paper, and stuffing it into the toilet, make your own toilet roll protector by recycling a plastic 2 litre pop bottle. Cut the bottle top and bottom off to form a toilet roll cover about 4.75" wide. Cut a slot in this cover, to pull the toilet paper through, about 1/2" high and 3" across. Remove your toilet roll and spindle from the wall mount, slide both inside your new toilet roll protector, and reattach to the wall mount. This should at least slow your toddler down!
Here's a Frugal Tip: Bolt your dressers, bookshelves, or any other tip-able furniture. Secure to the floor with L-braces, or to the wall with hook and eye - available at any hardware store.
Safety 1st Baby Choke Tester |
Here's a Frugal Tip: Every home should have a choke tester to check if toys and other objects are safe for baby play. But commercial choke testers can be very difficult to find, very expensive and too small to be effective. Did you know you have a frugal baby choke tester right in your own home? (No, I don't mean the baby...)
An empty toilet paper tube!
Commercial choke testers are made to gov't. regulation size of 3.5 cm (1 3/8") in diameter. However, the Consumer Products Safety Commission in the U.S. has reported many deaths of babies and children who have choked on objects slightly larger than 3.5 cm (1 3/8") in diameter.
Your ordinary toilet paper tube is 4.5 cm (1 6/8") in diameter. You can consider any toy or object in your home that fits inside this tube to be a choking hazard to your baby or child.
Here's a Frugal Tip: Need to lock up the fridge, oven, cupboard, etc. to keep out the kids (or pets!)? Anywhere you can place this lock on a door and around a corner edge, it will work!
Cut two pieces (1.5"x2") of self-stick loop Velcro®. Cut one piece (5"x2") of hook Velcro®. (Cut longer if needed.) Attach one piece of loop Velcro® at each end of the hook Velcro®. Place high, out of your child's reach, on the fridge, etc. - wrapping it around the edge of the door and onto the body of the fridge, etc. Peel off protective papers, and stick into place.
To use: Just unfasten hook Velcro®, and open door. Then refasten when door is shut.
Here's a Frugal Tip: As my baby is just starting to learn how to walk and it is cold in the evenings (the reason for not being barefoot), instead of buying socks with grips on the soles already, we buy the socks in the bulk bag and use puffy paint on the soles. If applied properly, this doesn't peel off (if you are worried about this, you can also get the non-toxic kind). You can write anything you want, or draw pictures, and baby has a better grip on the floor.
Thanks to Lisa for this Frugal Baby Tip!
Safety 1st Railnet |
Here's a Frugal Tip: When Josh was a baby, we had a sunken living room. It was only two steps down, but I worried about him falling through the wide-set railing that divided the dining room and the living room. I found some soft mesh fabric at the fabric store, which they were clearing out for one dollar per yard. I bought enough for the length of the railing and some matching fabric binding. I bound all the edges and added enough ties all around, to tie it onto the top railing, to the bottom of each of the bars and down both the sides. Once I put this up, we could still see through, but I had no more worries about my baby falling through.
If it had been a greater distance, such as an apartment balcony, it would be better to buy something more sturdy then fabric mesh. But for just a few steps, it worked great!
Here's a Frugal Tip: Protect your baby's tender cheeks from rough shoulder strap webbing with these easy covers. Just cut two 5" (13cm) squares from quilted fabric or acrylic fleece. Bind or serge around all edges.
Sew a strip of hook Velcro® down one edge, and loop Velcro® on the opposite edge (and side) of fabric. Or hammer-in a row of three snaps.
Fold one cover over each shoulder strap, and fasten Velcro® or snaps.
Mommy's Helper Soft Hearth Guard |
Here's a Frugal Tip: Extra long electrical wires, including extension cords and phone cords, may trip your little one - and are tempting for your baby to tug or chew on. These cord holders will hold those loose wires snugly against the wall.
Just cut 2+ pieces of 1" (5cm) wide sticky-back Velcro® about 2" (10cm) long. Place the sticky-back side Velcro® pieces along your baseboard, or wall, where the cord runs along - a foot or two (30-60cm) apart. Stretch your cord out tight and place the other side of the Velcro® over top of each piece attached to the wall, to hold the cord in place.
Use as many pieces of Velcro® as you need to hold the cord securely to your wall.
Here's a Frugal Tip: Create a bumper for your fireplace hearth with a pool noodle! Just cut the foam stick to the same length of your hearth (make a matching fabric sleeve for it, if you wish). Use double-sided Velcro® to attach it to your hearth!
Here's a Frugal Tip: When your childproof bottles are empty, save the bottle-tops. Wash them out and store in your kitchen drawer. When you buy something in a bottle that you wouldn't want your child to get into - but it doesn't come with it's own child-proof top, just check your child-proof bottle- top stash for a bottle-top that fits!
Some pharmacies will also give you a child-proof bottle-top free, upon request.
I know we've missed your favourite frugal baby safety tip - so tell us and we will add it to the list!
This article compliments of Born to Love.
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Born to Love articles are written by Catherine McDiarmid-Watt
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Last updated - April 5, 2024