Safety in the Kitchen

I am in the process of remodeling my kitchen and felt I needed to look into childproofing it from my curious little one.
A few good tips-
• Keep in mind that child-safety locks are most useful between the ages of 6 and 25 months.
• Make sure you keep all hazardous materials/chemicals in a high cabinet. Products with child resistant caps are a good extra precaution.
• Store knives and other sharp kitchen tools in a locked drawer.
• Use the back burners on the stove when possible and keep the pan handles away from the edge.
• In general it is wise to keep china and glass in a high cabinet. Grandmother’s china is so pretty and so much fun to break…
• Beware of what is near the edge of the counter-i.e. hot items, breakables, choking hazards, things that spill (ugh- HOW many times have you made THAT mistake? Nothing like pancake batter everywhere.)
• Trash should be inaccessible.
• Have one cabinet that is just for them to explore…Fill it with fun, safe stuff like Tupperware, wooden spoons, tins, and anything else that makes annoying noises.
• Children love helping out in the kitchen so always supervise them.

I came across a cool little picture that was published in Parenting magazine in February of 2005. It has a few pointers we may not of thought of...Who fills the soap dispenser before they are ready to use the dishwasher anyway? It gets all cruddy and spills otherwise doesn’t it? Anyway- this is a good reference diagram….Check it out.
http://www.parenting.com/parenting/whitepage/magazine_pullouts/pdfs/0205_Childproofing_Kitchen.pdf

-SBH