One Stop Boy Shop

Tot Loks. Yes the spelling error is intentional… No, I wasn’t trying to be cute!  I’m actually going to write about one or maybe two or three of the best inventions ever made for parents.  In our safety preparations, there were some gaps.  We bought cabinet locks, toilet locks and door knob covers. But along came Nathan who can find trouble in all shapes and forms.  We never had to child proof our house as diligently with our other boys.  Nathan inspires creative safety measures.  There were items on the market that we didn’t even know existed but were obviously made for parents with children like Nathan.

These first few are the ones we knew about and installed in preparation of Nathan becoming mobile. I think every parent knows about these.

The kitchen cabinets were easy to figure out how to secure.  We bought these, which worked until recently (this week actually), our 4 year old still can’t open them but Nathan now can!:

Door Knob covers keep our little man from escaping out all doors to go on walk-abouts in the neighborhood and so far they still do the trick, with the exception of the doggie door, which I have yet to find a solution for. I even attempted to duct tape the doggie door cover on. Nathan walked over to it, looked at it, yanked the tape off, handed it to me and proceeded out the door. Little Stinker!

Our stairway is wider than average and so we had trouble finding a gate that worked. The tension gates, Nathan could knock down (he’s a brute), the mesh ones, he just tore through the middle of them and so we found these, and he has yet to hurdle or break them. I feel their lifespan is shortening because he’s starting to put the metal bars between his toes in order to shimmy up them but so far so good and you can buy extensions for them for wider openings like our staircase.

Here’s where protecting the Houdini became interesting. There was proofing that was less obvious but was very necessary with “Hooligan Nathan” on the loose. We had to secure dressers and book cases to the walls since the child climbs up them! So we bought something like these, I couldn’t find the exact ones:

Our toughest quandary yet was, we were faced with the problem of how in the world can you lock other types of cabinets?  Those like your entertainment center and china cabinet?  My husband found the answer and it’s Tot Loks!

They’re also very inexpensive and are a must for protecting your DVD’s and Grandmothers China that your little Trouble child is sure to feel challenged to destroy. I could not believe what a great solution this turned out to be! No more scattered DVD’s and scratched movies. We didn’t know about these until recently so I thought I’d share this in case others have the same problem we did.

The only thing I should warn you about is if you buy them, don’t lose the opener! You can buy a replacement but honestly that would suck waiting to get into your cabinet until a new one arrived. Not only do they make your entertainment center child proof, their Mommy proof too without the opener!