Safe & Sound: Essential Tips for Childproofing and Elder-Proofing Your Home

Jamie: 00:00:00

Welcome to Thoughts from the Crawl Space, a podcast where our goal as home inspection experts is to support and serve our community.

Whether you're a homeowner, home buyer, real estate agent, or investor, we believe everyone deserves solutions to their homeownership challenges and inspiration along the way. Your path to success starts here. So today we are going to talk about safety proofing your house.

When I say those words, most people think of how you safety proof your house for a child or an infant. They start crawling around, getting curious and things like that. And there is definitely a lot to that and what we need to talk about today.

But we're also going to add the other end of that spectrum. What if you have elderly parents that have moved back into your house or that you're taking care of?

What are some things you can do for both young and old that will keep your house safer than maybe it was before?

Now you can't safety proof life things happen, but you can take steps to give yourself a better chance of making sure there's no unfortunate injuries in your house. So let's talk about some of those a little bit.

We're going to go kind of by category and then what will you do for the young kids and what will you do for the elderly? So number one, secure furniture and heavy items for young kids.

Use furniture anchors to secure like bookshelves, dressers and TVs to the wall to prevent them tipping over. You know what kids like to do, they like to grab on and pull themselves up. Think about a couple things in your kitchen.

If you have an island that is not secured to the floor and it has one overhang side, if a kid tries to do a pull up of one of those, that extra weight can tip it over right onto them and that could be a major hazard. Another thing in your kitchen for that young people sometimes are curious about is what's on the stove, what's cooking.

So they may either pull down the door and try the oven door and stand on it, which will tip the oven over or pull themselves up. So you want to have what's called an anti tip bracket on this furniture, on this appliance that will prevent the range from tipping over.

So a couple of little things that are just in the kitchen for the elderly, just heavy furniture. You want to make sure it's stable and doesn't have sharp corners or edges that could pose a tripping hazard.

One of the biggest potential injurious situations for the elderly is tripping, falling, breaking things. And so we don't want to have that if at all possible, so, so look out for those things.

It could be raised carpets, carpets loose, it's ripped, just any ledge. One thing that we look for when inspecting, especially outside, is any kind of offsetting your sidewalk between the sections.

Because any kind of offset maybe of a half inch or more could be a trip hazard for an elderly person that doesn't walk well, has a cane and shuffles. And so those are always things to look at. Number two, baby gates. Now the first reason is obvious.

So your baby doesn't go where you don't want it to go, right? Doorways keep them out of rooms that might not be childproof like the kitchens or bathrooms.

Potentially a, you know, a gun room or where you store chemicals or things like that down stairways. But what about for the elderly? They can also be used to block off areas with dangerous steps or obstacles.

Maybe you are hesitant about them using the stairs so you put one there. Maybe you, maybe they don't see well and so you put some walls up or some gates up so they don't accidentally traverse into these areas.

Maybe there's an area you are remodeling, it's not safe to walk in for the time being. Or you have stairs that are under renovation outside and you don't want them going out a certain exterior door.

All these are things to think about if you have elderly walking around your house and living there kind of along. Number one, secure sharp objects for young kids. They love grabbing things, right?

So store knives, scissors and other sharp objects in high locked cabinets or drawers. Use corner and edge guards on tables and counters and furniture.

I still think of our 18 month old when he was 18 months old and he tripped while running and fell into an entertainment center and ended up with several stitches in his forehead. So those sharp edges that are sticking out there, consider rounding them or putting padding on them or something like that.

And for the elderly, really the same thing. Out of sight, out of mind.

Depending on their mental state of mind, you don't want them using sharp objects like scissors and knives if they don't have to. Number four, use non slip rugs and mats. Secure rugs with non slip pads to avoid trip hazards.

Play areas for kids, make sure they're free of slipping dangers, especially in high traffic areas. And for the elderly, non slip rugs and mats are essential in the bathroom. You know, they don't have the same balance getting in and out.

So you want to have non slip mats in the kitchen hallways to prevent falls. So consider adding the non slip strips to the bottom of any slippery shoes or slippers.

Think of those strips you can put on stairs as well if they're still capable of going up and down stairs, but you maybe have wood steps that are slippery. Add some non slip treads to these so they are safer to go up and down and then grab bars and handrails.

For young kids this isn't quite as concerning because they grab everything to begin with and they're pretty rubbery and pliable and strong and flexible. But for the elderly, grab bars in bathrooms, near toilets, showers and stairs they're just essential.

They help them get up and down, they help them safely traverse stairs and they provide support when standing or are moving around. Number six, secure electrical outlets.

This is pretty obvious, but young kids, they're curious about what's in an electrical outlet or what happens if you put something into one of those slots.

And so you can be the parent that wants your kid to learn by experience or you can prevent them from learning by experience by putting outlet plugs in to keep little hands away from electrical sockets. Those are kind of ornery to get in and out and that's the purpose of them so that they don't easily be removed.

So they aren't easily removed and you know, a knife or a fork gets stuck into the electrical outlet. For the elderly, just ensure that the cords from Lance television and other devices do not create tripping hazards.

You would hope by the age that they are, they would not have the curiosity to stick something into an outlet, right? But the cords from lamps, TVs and other devices, they can get kind of jumbled.

And remember, it doesn't take much if you shuffle to trip over something. So just keep them out of reach, bundle them up and get them out of their way.

Another thing to consider is number seven, ensure proper lights for kids. Install night lights in the hallways and bathrooms and kids rooms to prevent nighttime accidents.

Make sure the stairs and the dark corners are well lit. Just a lot of times this is just for their peace of mind to keep a little light in the area.

And for the elderly, again, maybe they need brighter lights near staircases and entryways to reduce the risk of falls or hitting themselves on a sharp corner. Motion sensor lights are a consideration if it's something you don't want to keep on non stop.

Lots of advances in LED lighting and motion sensor lights are out there and there'll be one out there that will meet what you need. Number eight, stove knob covers and safety latches. Kids love to experiment and if you have the turn knobs for A gas or electric on the front of it.

Sometimes they will be tempted to turn those on. So you can put those childproof latches on where you have to snap the COVID off in order to turn it on. And that's a good way to to prevent that.

And for elderly individuals with mobility issues, ensure the stove or eat or ovens easy to access. Don't keep things stacked in front of it or items like step stools. That would be a trip hazard. Number nine is obvious.

Keep poisonous substances out of reach for kids. Store cleaning products and medications and other toxic substances in locked cabinets or high shelves and make sure you label these for the elderly.

Ensure medications are organized and clearly labeled to avoid confusion and potential overdose. And with regard to chemicals, sometimes they come in similar looking containers, so make sure you label those as well.

Another thing to consider is smoke and carbon monoxide detectors for young kids. Teach kids the sound of the smoke alarm and what do they do in case of emergency. Ensure detectors are installed in each room and hallway.

There are alarms out there that you can program to once they go off, they speak the name of the child. So you can train your child to learn that when that smoke detector is talking and speaking their name, they need to know what to do next.

Do they need to go out the window? What's the safety plan? What's the exit plan if you do have smoke or fire in your house? Along with that you can install carbon monoxide detectors.

And these are very similar to smoke detectors, but they can even come with vibrating alarms or lights for individuals with hearing impairments. And this would be more for the elderly obviously, but just something to get their attention and get them out of the house.

And the last one is supervised pools and water features for young kids. Install a pool fence with a self latching gate around any pool or water feature.

In most if not all neighborhoods this is a requirement to either have a fence with a self closing gate or a cover on the pool that's walkable and that always has to be on it if you're not using it. And so that really can be a benefit for young kids and for the elderly.

For the elderly, maybe make sure it's well lit at night around the pool and provide easy access to the pool with sturdy steps or handrails similar to a grab bar on a shower. So, you know, a lot of this is common sense. Make sure things are not trippable. Make sure they stay away from water and electricity.

All these little things add up to make your home safer. If you have any questions on any of this, be sure to give us a call. We can give you some tips on safety proofing your house.

Appreciate you listening today everybody. Have a great day. Thank you for listening this week.

You can catch up on the latest episode of the Thoughts from the Crawl Space podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. For more information about Gold Key Inspection services, go to goldkeyinspect.com.