Buying Safe Furniture for Kids: A Guide (Part 1)
December 15, 2011
When you’re buying furniture for your children, it’s not enough simply to pick out some pieces that look nice and feel comfortable – you need to pick out kids’ bedroom furniture that is safe and doesn’t pose a potentially dangerous hazard to your little ones’ health and welfare.
Kids like to play and explore, and they are not always cognizant of their surroundings. Kids climb and fall off of furniture, they tip over end tables onto themselves, they chew bedposts that may have been sealed and finished with harmful chemicals. It’s part of being a kid, and you shouldn’t wrap your child up in a protective bubble every day before they start playing. But you should be able to minimize the amount of damage they do with a few simple considerations.
First and foremost, if you are shopping for furniture online, it’s very easy to open up a new tab in your browser and quickly check the website for the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission in order to make sure that the products you are looking at haven’t been recalled or investigated for violating health and safety standards. Just conduct a sitewide search for “[brand or product name] recall” to get results, if there are any.
So long as you’re shopping online, many retailers have reviews, testimonials, and security badges (trusted vendors, etc.) readily available for view. Take these into consideration; an online retailer with a good reputation is probably more trustworthy with your child’s new furniture than a retailer without those badges.
If you have an opportunity to see the furniture in person prior to purchase, inspect the construction to make sure edges are smoothed out if not curved entirely. Curved edges are much less damaging in the case of an accident than sharp corners. Also, check to make sure the new kids bed is sufficiently strong to support your child’s full weight!
It’s also very important to make sure that your child’s new bedroom furniture is properly anchored to prevent tipping. Kids love to climb on bookshelves and pull on night stands; if the furniture is not anchored to a firm and solid surface, it could come toppling down on top of your poor child. You can nail a bookshelf directly into a wall, or use nylon straps connecting the top of the furniture to an anchor in the wall. You can also keep kids from toppling these furnishings over simply by removing their incentive to do so: keep their toys close to the ground, keep interesting objects within a child’s reach, or make it prohibitively difficult to climb the piece of furniture.
Part 2 Will Be Posted Soon… Keep an Eye Out!
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