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Today’s Hint: How to Childproof in No Time

August 27, 2013 By Hint Mama

Childproofing your home is a very time consuming process. Not only do you have to figure out what safety gear you need, but you have to narrow down the myriad of choices for everything from baby gates to cabinet locks and outlet covers, buy the items and then figure out how to install them.

By the time you’ve finished making your home foolproof (and hopefully babyproof), you’ve wasted a lot of precious (especially if you’re a working parent) time that could have been spent with your little one.

Plus, you also may have wasted money if you bought the wrong safety items for your home or you installed gear incorrectly and have to deal with even more unplanned purchases. That’s why today’s hint is to consider hiring a childproofer to do the childproofing for you. Paying for professional help with childproofing is many parents’ little time saving secret.

Soon before my daughter started crawling, we hired “The Childproofer” (whose name has been handed down in hushed tones from one friend to another in our circle of friends) to come by our home one afternoon and childproof it for us. He walked through our place, pointing out how we could rearrange furniture to make it more crawl friendly and went through the various childproofing product options we could consider, most of which he had in his truck.

A few hours (and about $800) later and voilà, our house was pretty much ready for an inquisitive crawler, complete with installed gates and window wedges.

While professional childproofers can be pricey ($500 to $1,500, according to one article), they have a lot of experience so can do the job a lot faster than you likely can, as a BabyCenter article points out. This means that by hiring a professional, you’ve gained hours of weekend time that you can now spend playing with your child rather than plugging in outlet covers.

You can find a childproofer at the site of the International Association for Child Safety, and Angie’s List has some helpful questions to ask before hiring a pro.

What are your childproofing tips for other parents?

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  • Today’s Hint: 5 Tips for Visiting Not-Childproofed Homes (& GIVEAWAY)Today’s Hint: 5 Tips for Visiting Not-Childproofed Homes (& GIVEAWAY)
  • Today’s Hint: 7 Frugal Childproofing TipsToday’s Hint: 7 Frugal Childproofing Tips
  • Today’s Hint: How to Childproof Vacation Home PoolsToday’s Hint: How to Childproof Vacation Home Pools
  • Today’s Hint: Six Tips for Childproofing When You TravelToday’s Hint: Six Tips for Childproofing When You Travel
  • Today’s Hint: 5 Hacks for Summer Travel with Babies, Toddlers and Young KidsToday’s Hint: 5 Hacks for Summer Travel with Babies, Toddlers and Young Kids

Filed Under: Childproofing Tagged With: childproofing, gates, outlet covers, safety

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  1. Today’s Hint: Babyproofing with a Beanbag Chair – Hint Mama says:
    October 14, 2013 at 2:13 pm

    […] can’t take credit for this clever idea – a childproofer who recently came to our home suggested the trick to us when I mentioned that we were worried about the flue but didn’t want to […]

  2. Today’s Hint: How to Childproof Stove Tops for Free – Hint Mama says:
    October 22, 2013 at 1:50 pm

    […] save time as a working parent, I’m an advocate of hiring a childproofer to help with babyproofing. So now that my daughter can walk and reach all of our kitchen drawers, I […]

  3. Today’s Hint: Childproof by Creating a Distraction – Hint Mama says:
    November 1, 2013 at 12:30 pm

    […] I’ve been sharing a number of easy and frugal childproofing hints I learned from a professional childproofer, including tricks for babyproofing […]

  4. Today’s Hint: 3 Tips for Childproofing a Dishwasher on the Cheap – Hint Mama says:
    November 19, 2013 at 3:52 pm

    […] that’s why when a childproofer recently came by our home to help us with babyproofing, I asked him what we should do to safeguard the appliance. His three easy, and free-to-implement, […]

  5. Today’s Hint: 5 Travel Childproofing Tips from a Professional Childproofer – Hint Mama says:
    November 22, 2013 at 2:11 pm

    […] so I turned to Alex Lund, the owner of the Bay Area-based childproofing firm, Safety Nook, that helped me childproof my home. Mr. Lund, who can relate to the dangers lurking in hotel and motel rooms as the father of a […]

  6. Today’s Hint: Turn Mommy (or Daddy) Getting Ready into an Activity – Hint Mama says:
    April 22, 2014 at 3:06 pm

    […] a mobile little one into the bathroom with you will only work if your bathroom is childproofed (ours is), and there certainly are some days when I need to get to work really early and my husband will […]

  7. Today’s Hint: The Skinny on Barely-There (i.e. Retractable) Baby Gates – Hint Mama says:
    September 15, 2014 at 1:11 pm

    […] says Alex Lund, the owner of the Bay Area-based childproofing firm, Safety Nook, which helped me childproof my home.  In contrast, pressure gates, a popular baby gate option on the market and the ones I have in my […]

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