5 Ways to Make Your Home Safer for Baby

September is designated as baby safety month by the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association (JPMA). It’s an important time to raise awareness about common household hazards that could seriously injure your young ones.

Here are 5 ways you can make your home safer for your baby and/or young children*:

1. Return product registration cards and check recalls periodically. A defective baby product or toy can lead to serious injury or death. A good way to avoid this situation is to make sure you register car seats and any other products that come with a registration card. This way, you’ll be notified if the product is recalled. You can also check what products have current recalls here.
2. Keep hot beverages away from the edges of tables and counters. It only takes a moment of you looking away for a child to reach for a steaming hot coffee or other beverage within reach. Be sure to either have your beverage in hand or keep it far enough in toward the center of the table that your child can’t reach it.
3. Keep refrigerator magnets (and any other magnets) out of your baby’s reach. Magnets can attract to one another even internally, which can result in organ damage.
4. Turn pot handles inward. When you’re cooking with a pot or pan on the stove, turn the handle inward instead of outward. Handles sticking outward can be grabbed by a child, which could result in serious scalds and burns.
5. Stow away laundry soap and dish soap pods/packs. Those little packets of soap look a lot like candy or something edible to a child. When ingested, these packets can cause very serious injury. Keep these items out of reach of your children and securely stowed away. Although under the sink may seem like a convenient location, this is also an extremely easy location for a child to access and thus not a good option.