Safety gates, not glamorous or particularly exciting but completely necessary when you have small children.
We have gates on our living room, bottom or the stairs and the top of the stairs. Currently the stair gates are the only ones we really use but that will change once Taya is on the move, then we will need gates at every door again.
For over two years we have had a traditional stair gate at the top of our stairs, unfortunately our top landing is very small and as a result we’ve learnt to do the ‘don’t get stabbed in the groin’ dance to move around upstairs and access the stairs when we need to come up or down. It’s not been ideal and our bathroom door has dents and paint chips from being bashed with the gate one too many times.
There’s a huge safety issue with there being such little space to walk around it, our biggest concern being the girls. The gate is just at the right height for Amelia now that if she ever ran into it, she’d lose an eye.
So, the solution? A folding gate! Game changer!
Can you spot a little face peeking out in this photo? Haha!
We had looked at these folding gates in the past but I had dismissed them because they’re not the cheapest option, this one was £45 from John Lewis but now that we’ve installed it, it’s worth every penny.
Just knowing that Amelia can’t hurt herself on it and that we no longer have to dance around it every time we go up the stairs is worth it. Now I can carry Taya, or clothes, or laundry or the hoover up and down stairs without worrying I’m going to get caught on the gate.
It folds back so small that now there is loads of room to walk around and no dangerous metal poles sticking out.
It’s also really child proof, it was almost adult proof as it took us a few attempts to work out how to open it again, so I know there’s no chance of Amelia being able to open it and let herself downstairs.
One of my big worries, even after we ordered it was whether it would be sturdy enough, what if Amelia leaned on it as she does like to stand at the top and wait for us when we’re getting things from downstairs. I was concerned that because it folds up so small, it would feel flimsy and wouldn’t be able to hold her weight.
I needn’t have worried at all, I’m pretty sure it could hold my weight (ok maybe not) but it’s super strong and an adult would have to really want to break it to actually break it.
The only downside to it was that it was pretty hard to install, almost all of the Youtube fitting videos we could find were in another language but we got there and now that it’s in, we don’t need to change it until the girls are old enough that we don’t need anymore.
I’m so happy with the gate, I never thought a stair gate could make me feel so happy but it’s really changed the way we use our upstairs and I feel like all of us are going to be so much safer.
Rachel xx
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