Electrical outlet safety

Nothing I can stick my
fingers into here...
moving on...

Just about every electrical outlet in our house is covered with a special outlet cover. Babies really do try and stick things into uncovered electrical outlets, at least mine do. Sure the cheapest way to cover the sockets is with little plugs, but it's so inconvenient having to pry them off in order to use the outlet, and my past experience has proved that often one will forget to replace the plug cover. Another downside to  the plug cover is that they are small enough to be a choking hazard if a small child or infant decided to stick one into his or her mouth. But a fair amount of supervision can prevent this as removing the plug covers can be difficult and you're likely to notice a child hard at work doing something like that, unless you have the press and pull plug protectors which are easier to removed. Still the plug covers are the cheapest and easiest way to cover electrical outlets quickly. I purchased a box for less than $5 once while on vacation to quickly baby proof the home we stayed in for about a week.

However, when I began baby proofing our house I decided I'd upgrade to the an outlet cover model for two reasons. The first being my annoyance with my experience with the pesky plug covers, and the second being all our outlets were an unattractive beige. The outlet cover provided not only baby proofing, maintaining easy outlet accessibility (for mom), but also hid the ugly outlet behind a fresh white plate, making all my outlets look modern and new.

We've had three babies learn to crawl in this house and I've not had any regrets about our investment in these covers. I did buy them in batches initially because covering the whole house felt like a lot of money up front. However, as the babies venture into various rooms, or rearranging furniture exposes another batch of outlets, we've purchased these covers as we went. I'm certain we've procured a few different brands, but they all seem the same to me and I've not noticed much difference between them.  I absolutely take it for granted until I find myself in a place where the outlets are not covered in any way, such as church or someone else's house. When there's no covers I'm uneasy and feel compelled to just keep the baby in my carrier so I won't have to worry about a finger finding it's way into the electrical socket. Of all the baby proofing items we've tried, these have been one of our best investments and brings me a bit of peace of mind.

Now if only I could find something that would disguise my knitting so that I could lay it down and not have to fear a little one pulling all the stitches off the needles the moment I turn around.