There’s no getting away from the fact that the kitchen is the most dangerous room in the average family home. This is especially true if you have small children. Parents of small kiddos can always use a few good kitchen hacks to help keep everyone safe from harm.
Hence this post, which includes some of my favorite hacks for helping to keep your littlest ones safe in the kitchen. These tips plus basic common sense are a good place to start when creating your own kitchen safety plan. These hacks will help you to identify some of the biggest kitchen dangers, and then take steps to limit them.
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Kitchen Hacks To Keep Your Family Safe From Harm
1. Place locks on cupboards containing chemicals
If you’re like most of us, you probably store plenty of cleaning products in the cupboard under your sink. But the last thing you need is for one of the kids to gain access to that area, and mess around with the chemicals!
Let’s face it: If small children drink cleaning fluids, you’ll have to take them to the emergency room. That is going to be a terrible experience for everyone involved, and it will make you feel like a bad parent.
So, do yourself a favor and invest in some good locks as soon as possible, then get them on your cabinets ASAP. This was one of the first things we did when we closed on our new home when I was pregnant, even before Kimmie was born. Locks are easy to install with basic tools that you already have around the house. Once your cupboards are locked, you should never have to stress about those cleaning products again.
2. Invest in an induction stovetop
Did you know there’s a type of stovetop that’s automatically safer for little ones because it doesn’t get hot? It’s called induction cooking, and works by creating a magnetic field with the cookware itself. (How cool is that?)
There are a couple of reasons why it makes sense to invest in an induction stovetop. I’m guessing that right now you use a stove whose surface becomes hot. So, if your kids start messing around in the kitchen, there is a decent chance they could injure themselves.
But because induction stovetops remain cool to the touch, no more kiddos burning themselves on hot stovetops! And while induction stovetops have the more precise temperature control of gas cooktops, induction stoves use electromagnetic energy rather than gas. (Bonus if, like us, you don’t have gas lines in your neighborhood!)
Of course, you’ll need to buy some cookware for induction stoves to ensure you can use your new, safer induction stovetop correctly. But the cost is minimal when weighed against what you gain in a safer kitchen. And the safety benefits of cooking on an induction stovetop make this a worthwhile investment whose value is priceless.
3. Store knives out of reach of the children
Lastly, you’ll need to make sure the knives in your kitchen remain out of reach of your children. There are lots of options out there when it comes to achieving that goal.
At the very least, you can get a knife storage device and keep it on a shelf (or somewhere else suitably out of reach). When my hubby and I got married, I married into his large knife block, which works great for this.
But one of my favorite ideas for knife storage is mounting magnetic strips high on the wall, so you can store knives and other sharp objects out of little ones’ reach. If not for hubby’s attachment to his knife block, we totally would have done this years ago. But I’ve found that these magnetic strips are great for mounting all sorts of other things up high, off countertops and out of the way.
It’s even possible to buy rubber knife covers that will prevent your kids from coming into contact with the sharp end of the metal. This should be mandatory if you store knives in drawers, both to keep your kids safe and to protect your knives’ blades. But they are also critical for, say, packing knives for your summer camping trip.
These kitchen hacks should help to keep your family safe from harm while your littles are still little. The good news is, the older your kiddos get, the less you have to worry about dangers in the kitchen. But as long as you have toddlers underfoot, taking the necessary precautions is critical. But with these hacks under your belt, you’re off to a great start formulating your kitchen safety plan.
What’s your favorite safety-related kitchen hack? Let us know in the comments!
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