Don’t Child-Proof Your House – “Fake-ize” Your House

Pre-spill disorganization. I don’t even know where half my spices are placed anymore. 

For the second time in two days, Baby has spilled spices on the kitchen floor. Things like mustard powder and chili pepper flakes aren’t the best things for a baby to spill and potentially sample, am I right? (Let’s not talk about the time she unscrewed the jar of almond extract.)

Who let Baby into the spice cabinet?

Me.

Why on earth would I do that?! Well, Baby likes it, and at dinner prep time that’s the only thing she wants to do besides be held in my arms. So, given the choice between spilled spices and no dinner, I’ll take the spills.

My husband had an epiphany a few nights ago, though, for how we can let her think she has free reign in the house.We can move our spices into an upper cabinet and put “fake spices” (and our some of our innocuous items like cinnamon sticks and anise pods) down below. Baby can still play and our goodies are safely tucked away.

Forget baby-proofing. Basically what we need to do is to make a fake house at Baby’s level and keep it real three feet and above. Sound realistic?

Granted, this is coming from a mom who hates baby-proofing.

But I think it might actually be possible:

• We could take all of our DVDs out of the TV cabinet and just put in the few kids movies we own, plus a few of our crummier movies.
• We can hang the kiddie brooms and dustpan at a 3′ height and move ours up a few feet on the wall, out of their reach.
• We can fill the lower drawers of our hutch with the girls’ toys, then put our things in a closet bin.
• Our tall bookcase can hold their books on the lower two shelves and our books on the upper shelves.
• I can put old clothes, my pajamas, socks or anything else I don’t mind being mussed and unfolded repeatedly into my lower dresser drawers and just let Baby go play.

So there you have it – a fake house from 3-feet and below, and everything for adults is safe and sound out of Baby’s reach. Reasonable?

Nahhhhh! I’m really just joking, although I do kind of like the spice cabinet idea. If we had excess upper cabinet space, I’d be quite tempted. I think I just need to accept that my spices will be meddled with for a few months longer, until Baby can learn to explore nicely.

And maybe until then I’ll screw the tops on a bit tighter….