A Guide to Child-Proofing Your Home While Retaining Its Value & Elegance

While the joys of being a parent know no bounds, many parents would say they wish for a time when there wasn’t always the sound of a baby crying, children screaming, toys littered around the house, walls and surfaces scratched, battered and the home isn’t completely unrecognizable.

Every woman’s home is a representation of herself. Where it is dirty and unkempt, and when it’s orderly and well managed, it shows just how much heart and time has been dedicated into it. Raising kids in a home, however, is a whole different ball game.

Most people would tell expecting parents to forget about their lives being theirs anymore. This is because parenthood is so demanding that it pretty much takes over everything else, including the home. You find that nothing is yours anymore, your living room becomes the kids playroom; your couch, the toy shelf; and the dining table changes to drawing/colouring table. That being said, there are ways you can retain control of your own home. By child-proofing in a way that still maintains the elegance and value of your home.        

Use Light Texture on Walls

Walls are one of the greatest dirt magnets in a home. Even worse when there are children around. Walls can take on a life of their own within minutes. Texture walls are beautiful to look at and easy to do by oneself, even if you’re a beginner DIY-er. They are also very practical and a great way of covering up defects in your walls or ceilings.

On the other hand, texture walls are difficult to clean and can pose a serious problem when you have kids running around the house. For easy wall maintenance, avoid heavy texture walls. Using satin or eggshell paints will give enough sheen for easy wash up. You can also cover your walls with either semi-gloss paint or vinyl coated wallpaper.

Choose Suitable Flooring

Flooring is expensive and everyone wants to be happy with their choice. However, when you have to consider the kids you’ll have in the nearest future, making the right choice becomes a lot harder.

For a safe yet stylish floor, you may choose to go with bamboo flooring. It is eco-friendly, cheap and moisture resistant, which comes in handy when you have kids. Another suitable flooring method is carpeting. With Olefin, a stain resistant carpet fiber, you can ensure that no stains remain permanent.

Carpet tiles are also another floor choice that is easy and cheap to replace and also stylish, noiseless and soft to the touch; perfect for when kids go tumbling down. Linoleum flooring’s striking marbled look is just what you need to make that bold design statement in your home. It is also anti-bacterial, non-toxic, environmentally friendly (making it safe for kids), and offers interesting colors and choices. 

Cork flooring is durable, cushioned, anti-bacterial (resistant to mold and mildew), and noiseless. It is also non-toxic, environmentally friendly, and stylish with various colours and designs to choose from.

Protect Your Tabletops

Having kids in most cases means that you’re prepared to say goodbye to your furniture, carpet, walls, TV, tables, tabletops and many other things around the house. One of the most damaged places asides the walls is your tables, including dining, side, and centre tables. Sentry offers affordable protective table pads against moisture, spills, scratches, dents, heat, nicks, and kids’ art supplies for your dining room tables, coffee tables, dressing tables and any other flat surface that needs protection in your home. Doing this will preserve your surfaces and retain the value of these items if you ever want to sell.

Use Stain-Resistant Upholstery

Your sofas and chairs will undoubtedly get a lot of use regardless of whether you have children or not. However, with children and even pets, they get additional action including shoe stains, scratches, spillage, food and oil stains, and pee stains. With stain resistant synthetic fabrics, your chairs and sofas will be easy to clean and will last much longer.

Get quality slipcovers that will give your chairs and sofas maximum protection against damage. And the best thing about them is that they can be easily removed when you have guests or want to sell for a good price.

Guard Your Window and Door Screens

More than likely with kids around, your screens will get torn, popped out, poked at, stretched, pushed on, and completely damaged, making it unattractive for receiving visitors. Guarding your screens will prevent them from getting damaged and also keep the screens in good condition. A perfect solution would be a product that not only offers style, but also screen or window security.

Protect Your Silverware

The best way to protect your special occasion dishes and silverware is to store them out of the reach of children. If they’re kept in a place within their reach, before you know it the next time you’re clearing up after their role playing exercise, you’ll find yourself sadly sweeping away the broken fragments of your beloved dishes.

Wind Up Your Shades

A set of beautiful, stylish blinds can be ruined in less than a minute. Pulling the strings the wrong way, shoe marks, stains, tears and rips are just some of the ways they can be destroyed. To avoid this and preserve them, use a quality blind and shade cord windups, which will help to keep the cords out of the reach of children.

Alternatively, cordless blinds can also be used. When child-proofing your homes, the best cordless blinds to use are plantation shutters, roller shades, and cellular shades. Cordless blinds offer simple operation, a more elegant look, cleaner windows, and a safe and secure window option for your kids, and in addition, the peace-of-mind that comes with it.

No matter how well-behaved your kids eventually turn out to be, there’s always that period where they will be kids. And kids can be very messy. This guide will help you know some ways you can minimise the damage and keep your home as clean and stylish as possible.