10 Brilliant Tips for Organizing Your Bathroom for Under Fives

According to the DTI, in the UK the people who have most accidents at home are, perhaps unsurprisingly, the under fours. Two thirds of home drownings happen in baths. It’s unsurprising, therefore, that there are a million and one articles out there on testing water temperature, securing taps, and not leaving children unattended. Burns and scalds are the immediate and obvious risk.

However, whilst hot water and drowning are the obvious risks to children, particularly if unsupervised, making the space baby/child safe is about more than bath safety. There are far less guides to organising your space for safety during these vulnerable years. easyStorage to the rescue with ten top tips!

1.       Get an internal hook lock (for example ‘hook and eye’ type) on the door, out of the reach of children. Excited children who run off to do something else or escape in the middle of a tantrum (example: “I want the red towel not the blue one!”) can easily fall down stairs or hurt themselves. Whilst preventing their exit may be hard on their nerves and yours, having them in a smaller space and under your watchful eye is likely to keep them safer. Take any low level locks off the door – you don’t want a situation where a child locks themselves in the bathroom alone.

2.       Baby bath seats are convenience devices to protect YOUR back, and make washing easier, not safety devices. Keep them out of the bathroom when not in use to prevent squished fingers, avoid trip hazards and make bath access easy for the rest of the family. (Family bathrooms are generally not reserved for just babies.)

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3.       By contrast, non-slip bath mats are a great safety device for mobile children. Keep them in the bathroom so that you don’t have to leave a child unattended to collect them. Make sure you keep them clean and dry. 

4.       Take the plugs off baths and sinks and get them out only when in use. This will stop mobile youngsters plugging in if they slip into the bathroom and try to run their own bath/fill a sink. Keep them in a cabinet or on a shelf above ‘child’ level’. Very young children are prone to drowning because they’re top-heavy - they can drown in less than 3cm of water, in less than half a minute. (A toilet lid lock can also help in this respect, as well as preventing squished fingers.)

5.       If you have a laundry basket in the bathroom – and it’s a great place to put it as it’s where many undress – look at the lid. If it has a ‘snap ‘ or catch, or if it drops down heavily (think wooden boxes), consider gadgets to slow the shut or replace it with something that will be softer if a child puts their fingers in or pulls it over.

6.       Non-slip rugs on the floor will keep you, and as a consequence your child, safe in the bathroom (as well as being kinder on your knees if you kneel to bathe baby).

7.       Organise flannels, bath toys, towels etc where they are easy for you to access.  Cosmetics (soaps, shampoos etc.), both for them and for you, should be easy for YOU to access but not your child. Shelves above the bath or a shower caddy can be useful in this respect. ALWAYS keep cleaning products and cloths out of reach of the children.

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8.       Bins are irresistible to children, full of textures and coloured waste. We can inadvertently throw in things that children put in their mouths. And sharp things like disposable razors. Either put bins up too high to reach or find a bin with a lid that you can lock down or add a latch to.

9.       Putting all of the ‘out of reach’ things into a cabinet is logical, but ensure that the cabinet is heavy enough not to tip if a child pulls on it. Heavy stones/a brick in the base may help, as may hooking it to the wall. Latches on doors and drawers may also stop a child accessing what they shouldn’t.

10.   Windows need attention. Bathroom windows need opening to prevent moisture - limiters prevent them from opening more than four inches preventing a child falling out. They can be deactivated in an emergency for exit. Even if you don’t usually open windows, bathroom windows tend to be the exception as it is a room that retains much moisture. Not that strangulation involving blind cords kills at least two babies each year in the UK. Cordless blinds are best and ROSPA (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) has lots of advice:  https://www.rospa.com/campaigns-fundraising/current/blind-cord

Remember….

Children aren’t all the same, and some are ingenious! Whilst we’ve covered some of the basics here, there will always be the child who loves to unravel toilet roll, Andrex puppy style, or who pulls themselves up on the exit pipe of the sink.

Nothing can beat watchfulness. If you see your child doing something that puts them at risk, respond! Head constantly hits the tap? Rubber and silicone water spout covers are available. Bumped heads on counters? Corner guards will help. Their climbing habit defeats the safety things you’ve done to keep your cabinets safe? Sorry to break the bad news, but the cabinet  - and anything else they can climb on like stools or freestanding towel rails - may have to leave the room. They’ve managed to find your electric toothbrush and are using it as a tile cleaner? Time to move the brush off the counter and up out of reach. They’re pulling on the shower curtains? Hook them up!

Google search (or other search engine, of course) is your friend for solutions!

And if you need some temporary storage for all of those chairs, rails and more that our little ‘rugrats’ and sofa surfers can pull over, easyStorage is here to help whilst baby grows: easyStorage website.