Designing A Child Friendly Kitchen

By Janette Mae Phillips

Weve all heard the statistics; more accidents happen in the home than outside it, and one of the most dangerous places for children is the kitchen! All those hot surfaces, boiling liquids, and sometimes even dangerous chemicals make for a highly risky area for kids. But if youre spending time in the kitchen yourself, when your kids are at home, theyre going to be in and out an awful lot of the time. So how can you make it safe for them (and, incidentally, for you!)?

When the kids are tiny, most parents do the rounds of the home with an arsenal of table tennis ball type fittings to go on sharp corners, ready for when the little ones start to move about independently and those corners seem to beckon like a magnet. Well make sure rugs dont slip easily, put gates on stairways, and have beds for them with protective sides to prevent them falling out in their sleep. But the kitchen, with all its inherent dangers, is a more difficult one to protect.

Granted, most of the worktops are too high for the kids to get at easily, so sharp cutlery, glass items and other objects will be safely out of reach as long as you dont leave them too near the edges or have cloths and chopping boards overlapping the counters so that little hands can pull them down on top of themselves (I know, I have a scar on my right arm to this day from pulling at a teacloth on which a teapot was standing; I guess Im just lucky it didnt tip itself out on to my face…).

But under the counter, behind doors that are easy to open, lurks a plethora of hazardous substances. Its worth installing child-resistant locks on those lower doors; some simple and cheap ones work by only allowing the door to be opened very slowly, which an adult will do but a child wont, and these are simple for even the least expert in DIY to install. You can buy proper locks, but theres always the chance that you or someone else in the family will forget to use them, and the potential for a ghastly family row in which everyone blames everyone elsemuch better avoided, in my book. The best solution, of course, is to move all the items you do not want your child to have access to into a single cupboard, above the countertops, and fit a proper lock on it just in case!

Some of the most hazardous areas for children, though, are around cookers. If you have an oven that sits on the floor, do make absolutely sure that it cant be opened easily by prying hands and, crucially, that the front or edges of the door dont get hot enough to burn delicate skin. If necessary, change the oven to a safer one or, and this is also better for your own back when lifting heavy dishes in and out, have it moved to eye level. You cannot possibly keep an eye on your children for every second, and you simply dont want to take any chances, do you?

About the Author: Janette likes to decorate her kitchen and using

kitchen ideas

and / or

kitchen designs

is something she definitely advises for that new friendly kitchen design .

Source:

isnare.com

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