How to Baby Proof Your Kitchen in 8 “Easy” Steps

You may remember a recent post I did on How to Maintain a Clean Kitchen in 6 “Easy” Steps. Well, the more mobile your youngest becomes your methods sometimes have to adjust. Especially when your oldest young’ns are away.

I now present you with my latest method of baby proofing the kitchen with less helpers.

Are you ready?

Step 1: Hold your baby out in front of you. Take a good look at her. Pay close attention to her size. Smile real big and coo before continuing on to Step 2.

20130221-231104.jpg

Step 2: Position your baby on your hip and hold her with one arm. Grab a broom with the other.

Step 3: Sweep a spot on the floor at least two baby lengths square. (May need 3 baby lengths if your baby is a fast crawler.)

20130221-231519.jpg

Step 4: Keeping broom in close reach set baby down on the floor.

20130221-232606.jpg

Step 5: Quick! Grab broom. Immediately start sweeping the area your baby heads toward.

20130221-232939.jpg
Step 6: Throw a pan lid and spoon in her path to slow her down a bit.

(WARNING: Pan lid and spoon are no match for the Cheerios clear across the floor in keeping your baby’s attention.)

20130221-233757.jpg(But having a big brother with a matching lid and spoon helps.)

Step 7: Grab dust pan. Sweep it all into dust pan before baby sees the dust pan. (Dust pans are even more attractive than Cheerios!)

Step 8: When baby gets fussy because you took all the “fun” stuff away give her a nice big carrot to teeth on.

20130221-234220.jpg
How about you? Do you have any great baby proofing tips you’ve learned along the way? Please share them with us in the comments.

I have so many things to write about. The hard part is deciding what to write about first. I’m also contemplating a few book ideas. Be watching for more on that.

Don’t miss a post. Sign up for our free email updates.

For those who have already joined, you may have noticed that I’ve tweaked the look of my email posts.

Let me know what you think!

Share

How to Maintain a Clean Kitchen in 6 “Easy” Steps

20130123-214100.jpg
I spent a day this week with just my 4 younger children. Joshua and Ruth had gone to a nearby farm to help with their animals and to have riding lessons.

I had to drop them off. Leaving the younger 4 by themselves is a disastrous proposition not even worthy of consideration. (Okay, I admit I enjoyed putting that many big words into one simple sentence.) In other words I’m not leaving the little kids by themselves for even a minute.

I got them all up and the older children ate breakfast while the younger ones were scrounging around for their shoes.

We dropped their big brother and sister off for their riding lessons and I took the younger ones to a local store for honey buns and hot chocolate mix.

That was a fancy breakfast in their minds.

20130123-214128.jpg
After breakfast I decided to let them have a little free time while I worked on some lesson plans.

Jonathan and Hannah were pretty creative. Hannah made herself a mop lady and Jonathan a broom man.

Hannah named her new friend Jennifer. Jonathan said his was grandpa with a Mohawk and a cowboy hat.

20130123-214243.jpg
Elijah has been working on potty training. I have also been having to teach him not to be rough with Elisabeth.

In the above picture of Elijah and Elisabeth they are playing on our kitchen floor.

I’ve been managing to keep the kitchen clean. I try hard to keep every dish washed up after each meal. Sometimes there are a few left to be done before bed but not nearly as many as there used to be.

I have learned that there are a couple of things that help in being resolved to keep the kitchen clean.

1. You can’t expect anyone else to do it. I can tell my children to help but unless I show that I care and put forth some effort myself then no one else will.

2. Be determined. I tell myself that I’m not going to bed until every dish is clean. If I want to get to bed at a reasonable time I have to keep those dishes up throughout the day or I’d be up all night doing dishes.

3. Don’t make excuses.That popular saying going around that I used to listen to. “The dishes can wait they’re not going any where.”

That is true but unless you want those dishes to multiply into an embarrassing mess you better catch it while there is just a few. Otherwise you’re stuck playing catch up and believe me that is no fun. Keeping it up is much easier than catching it up.

4. Numbers don’t matter. Cleaning with 2 versus 6 kids? I’ve had only 2 kids before and now I have 6. I can actually speak from experience on this question.

With 2 children you don’t have as many helpers. Of course, they don’t make as big a mess either. Technically clean up is about the same with both.

With 6 kids there may be more dishes but you can assign them jobs that you would normally have to do if there were only 2 children.

5. Make it quality time. The same saying about the dishes not going anywhere is usually followed by “…but your children are only young once.” In other words, you should spend that time doing dishes and cleaning house with your children instead.

Okay, I’ve followed that advice before. I actually liked it. I much preferred spending quality time playing with my children to housekeeping. That’s why I had a messy kitchen for the past 2+ years.

I now have a new outlook on quality time. This year I’ve determined that I’d have even more quality time if the kids and I cleaned up the kitchen before we do other things.

And who says cleaning the kitchen isn’t quality time? If you think about it we are all in the room together. Why not teach my kids a new song while we’re cleaning.

Now with little ones particularly of the potty training years then I may have to leave the dishes for a moment to take care of an emergency.

If it’s a 6 month old wanting to be held. A clean floor with a pot lid and plastic spoon is a very fun toy. More fun than a brightly colored toy in fact.

6. Give the excess away. If I haven’t used a dish in over a year then I probably don’t need it. Give it away! Think of it as one less dish to wash. It’s also one more spot in the cabinet freed up for those dishes I do use.

Do you have any advice on keeping the kitchen clean? Or do you have a housekeeping question that you’re struggling with? I’d love to hear from you. Tell me what you think.

I’ll be posting again in another day or two. In that post I’ll be answering the frequently asked question, “When do you find time to write?” 🙂

If you don’t want to miss any of my upcoming posts, please sign up for my free email updates.

Share