Making a Safe Haven for Baby

My daughter is in that lovely stage where she is in everything, and I do mean everything. I recently had posted about creating a kid-friendly office, and now I am just sharing some easy ways that we are making things a little safer around our home for Emily.

One of Emily's favorite hobbies is yanking down all of the items on our bookshelves. She rips out the papers and has a blast shredding our magazines. To make it safe for her (and to save our precious mementos!) I cleared the bottom shelves and filled them with things just for her. Pictured on this shelf is a basket full of toys that she can play with and several of her board books for her to read. This makes her feel like a big girl, and gives her some things to do while I am working.

One of Emily's other favorite things to do was to tear apart the DVD cases and the inserts that came with them. I found our movies were getting banged up and things were getting mixed up. My husband's games for his Playstation and the memory cards were also fair game in the mixing-up-discs game.

I headed over to Target and got this CD case for $9.99. In the first half of the case, I filled it with the children's movies so that they would be easily accessible for us and anyone who happened to be helping us with the kids. The second half of the case was filled with my husband's games and his memory cards, so they wouldn't get destroyed or lost.

This was a great solution for baby-proofing, but it was also a great way to cut down on some clutter in our entertainment unit. I went ahead and tossed all of the cardboard covers to our videos and stacked them on a high shelf away from little hands. On each side of the VCR is a stack of movies. On one side are the older kids movies (for my son) & on the opposite side are all of the baby movies (for our daughter). It has made things easier to find and also reduced the amount of clutter around our television.

Emily also loves to help out in the kitchen while I am getting our dinner prepared. I leave access to some of the fun cupboards for her to play in. These just contain the kid's plates and cups or our bins of plastic containers. I also have a container filled with her little Leapfrog alphabet sets for her to play with while I get everything ready.

What are some creative ways you make your home safe for your children? Any helpful tips for mothers in the trenches right now? I am all ears!