Prioritize the safety of children on your property by taking proactive steps to childproof your rental. Kids are notorious for getting into trouble when parents take their eyes off them for one second, which is why it’s essential for landlords and tenants to share the responsibility of securing the rental property to keep harm at bay. Childproofing your house is a great safety tip, but with so many ways kids could seriously injure themselves, it’s easy to overlook some things until it’s too late. Thankfully, we’ve put together the perfect checklist for childproofing that’ll make your rental a family-friendly haven.
Essential Safety Features on Common Areas
Secure High Traffic Areas
Start childproofing in the busiest locations such as the living room and hallways because families tend to spend more time in these spaces, increasing the risk of danger. If your home has stairs, ensure you include stair gates in your hallways to prevent falls at the top and bottom of the stairs. It would also be best to keep your hallways clutter-free. After all, the last thing you want to have kids trip over your junk.
In the living room remember to anchor down heavy furniture like bookshelves or TVs that could create major accidents when they tip over. You can even use corner guards to protect children from furniture pieces that may have sharp edges. While pools might not be a high-traffic area, they’re a major drowning hazard so install self-latching fences, or better yet an alarm, to prevent kids from wandering too close to the water without supervision.
Window and Balcony Safety Precautions
Prevent falls from high places by installing guards on your windows and balconies. This tip is especially important if you live in a home with more than one floor, where a fall from such heights could be fatal. Since it’s easy for children to miss a step or trip when playing close to such spaces, it would be best to protect them by getting a childproof guard, and ensuring your railings are secure. Aside from the threat of falls, Bay Property Management Group Philadelphia suggests preventing strangulation by using cordless window blinds.
Basic Emergency Procedures Tailored to Family-Friendly Rentals
Fire Safety Plan
Conduct regular fire drills to ensure your tenants know what to do when there’s a fire outbreak. Rather than panicking, kids and adults would be a lot safer if they knew what to do during such emergencies. Fire safety drills ensure that your renters can easily identify evacuation routes, safeguarding them from flames or smoke. Also, adopt a proactive fire safety plan by installing appropriate smoke and carbon monoxide detectors that can alert residents when there’s a problem. It would also be a good idea to provide easily accessible fire extinguishers and ensure your tenants know how to use them.
Medical Emergency Plan
Childproofing your rental doesn’t make it immune from accidents. On rare occasions, kids still get past these safety measures or injure themselves in places you forgot to be childproof and they might require urgent medical attention. Thus, you can include an emergency first aid kit in your rental, or advise tenants to prepare one with supplies like bandages, antiseptic wipes, and sterile gauze. Still, it’s important to establish rules on how to childproof a property before new renters move in to prevent as much damage as possible.
Weather Emergency Plan
Ensure your tenants are never caught off guard by the weather by advising them to create an emergency kit. However, it’s vital to prepare a kit that caters to your needs depending on where you live. For instance, if your property is inland, floods and hurricanes may not be a significant risk, so you might not need a water purifier in your kit. On the other hand, people living in coastal cities may face shortages of clean drinking water when floods hit, so a water purifier would be vital. Other basics your kit should have include batteries, food, medication, water, and a whistle for help. As a parent, you may also have to include diapers, wipes, powder, and child-sized utensils.
Conclusion
Keep all children on your property safe at all times by prioritizing childproofing your house. As a landlord, it’s your responsibility to keep your tenant safe, and that extends to their children too, so consider safeguarding high-traffic areas like hallways with stair gates, and anchoring down heavy furniture in your living. You can also prevent falls from high places by putting guards on your windows and balcony.
If the property owner doesn’t have these set up, you can install them yourself with permission. Also, it would be best to have an emergency plan so tenants know what to do when there’s a fire, accident, or bad weather.
