How to Baby-Proof Your Home

1. Install Baby Gates
Baby gates are great for keeping babies out of places you don’t want them to go, like inside your home. String several gates together with zip ties to form a barrier around the perimeter of your property. Most babies aren’t smart enough to figure out how to open the gates, and neither are you, but you’re probably tall enough to step over.

2. Affix Safety Latches to Lower Cabinets
Babies love opening cabinets to rifle through your cookware, cleaning supplies, and the collection of half-used batteries you keep in your junk drawer. If word gets out that you’re the kind of household that keeps things securely locked away, they won’t bother swinging by.

3. Put Wedge Locks on Every Sash Window
If there’s one thing all babies have in common, it’s that they are exceptional crawlers. Their tiny hands and capless knees can take them anywhere: under fences, over flowerbeds, and through your open windows. Use wedge locks to ensure your windows can’t be opened more than four inches, as most babies are taller than this. If you hear of shorter babies being sighted in your area, keep your windows shut and install bars.

4. Cover All Electrical Outlets
In the event a baby does invade your home, you’ll want to ensure all unused outlets are covered. Infant intruders are always on the lookout for places to recharge the toys their parents told them were broken, like the Repeat What You Say Light-Up Dancing Cactus. Then not only will you have a giggling baby on your hands, but a stuffed saguaro that mimics you every time you sob, “Please, just pull all the books out of my bookshelves and leave.”

5. Eliminate Food Sources
Babies love food almost as much as they love breaking and entering. Keep your home and property free of scraps. At night, when the threat of a baby invasion is highest, throw all remaining food into garbage bags. Use rope to hang the bags in a tree, suspending them at least twelve feet off the ground, eighteen feet from the trunk, and, ideally, thirty-seven miles from your house.

6. Seal Cracks in Your Foundation
Babies can sense weakness from thirty-six miles away. Seal up cracks in your foundation, and make sure the land around your home slopes away so a passing baby doesn’t roll through it, intentionally or otherwise. Babies are built like bowling balls and, given enough momentum, will bowl a child-sized hole into the basement—and right through your ten-year-in-the-making miniatures museum.

7. In Fact, Seal Everything
With their soft, bendable bones and collapsible skulls, babies are literally designed to squeeze through very narrow spaces. Like birth canals, tunnel slides, and that crawlspace you didn’t know existed until it was too late.

8. On That Note, Forget the Wedge Locks and Just Board Up
See: babies squeezing through narrow spaces, above.

9. Regularly Inspect for Signs of Baby Activity
Just because you don’t see a baby doesn’t mean there’s not one there. Keep an eye on your closest friends and family for evidence of impending infants. Common signs include links in your inbox to StorkStuff! registries, vacation photos tagged #babymoon, and a shift in dinner party conversation from Damien Hirst’s role in the commodification of contemporary art to something called a “Snoo.”

Should infants begin to breach your social circles, it might be time to assess your living space for potential hazards, in case your friends ever stop by to “let you meet the baby.” For further help, see our companion guide: How to Turn Your Tastefully Decorated Living Space into a Baby-Safe Bounce House.