Mortgage Monday: More Babyproofing

When my wife and I were looking for a house it was always in the back of our mind the steps that we would have to take with each property both right away and in the near future to make sure it was a safe environment for our son. Some places were better than others and while the home we eventually purchased wasn’t exactly what we had in mind, we knew that it had everything we wanted and we could baby proof everything with relative ease. When we first moved into our home we, once again, took stock of what needed to be done but, since our son wasn’t mobile at the time, nothing was pressing.  

A few months later and the trips to Lowe’s, Walmart, and other stores became more frequent. When he first started crawling we made sure to take care of the babyproofing basics around the house. This consisted of making sure that the outlets had covers, baby gates were installed, and a foam buffer was secured around the hearth. At this point, we were pretty much ahead of the game in most regards. However, we quickly fell a little behind.

Before I knew it, I was putting up additional gates, including some handyman work to install the one at the top of the stairs, putting covers on door knobs, and constantly surveying the house for the odds and ends that could cause a problem. After a long weekend, we were once again where we needed to be but that didn’t last very long either. With our son’s first few steps that pesky list reappeared and quickly began growing until finally we couldn’t put it off any longer.

This time around things were a little more involved as we installed locks on the kitchen cabinets, secured furniture to walls, and rearranges some of the other items throughout the house so that it would remain out of reach of our son’s tiny curious fingers. This was also about the time that we had to readjust our car seats and install additional doorknob covers. Again, we got caught up rather quickly but find ourselves with a list that refuses to go away.

Each time we have to add or install things here and there we think back to some of the houses that we looked at during our search. Every time we are relieved that we made the decision that we did and purchased the house which we now call our home. It just goes to show that even if a house seems perfect and could have immaculate staging, you still have to think about your needs and how well that space works for you now and, more importantly, in the future.