Last week we talked about how to build a makeshift playground in your garage. Without activity options somewhat limited and the cold weather coming soon, we will have a harder time finding safe places for our kids to play. My kids are like many other kids- they are super active. If they don’t run and play every day, they will go CRAZY and drive my husband and me nuts. Plus, we got a positive test for COVID-19, so we are hunkered down at the house until we are cleared to leave in two weeks!
The playground I built for the kids has been a pretty big hit. They want to be playing in the garage all day! Hopefully, when I’m able to go to the store in a few weeks, I’ll get some materials to build a better, slightly fancier set up for the kids to play in. But for now, I am limited to what I already have at the house!
I still need to hang out in the garage with them while they are playing in there because the playground I built has components that aren’t exactly to city playground code… basically, I definitely threw together some of the things to play on… like the makeshift slide, which is an old swingset slide zip-tied to the top of an A-frame ladder. (hey, I said it was cheap- not fancy) Even though my husband or I am in the garage with the kids at all times, I wanted to get the garage at least a little more childproofed in case we weren’t as focused as need be.
SWEEP THE FLOOR
This one is pretty obvious, I know. But Garage floors tend to be pretty nasty, and who knows what is tracked onto the floors. To avoid the possibility of a missed nail or screw, do a quick sweep before bringing all the toys in. Plus, it’s always nice to have a freshly swept garage. I try and sweep my garage once a month or so to keep things tidy.
- PUT CHEMICALS UP
The next thing I did was put up all the chemicals in my garage on a high shelf or move them out altogether. I don’t have a lot of stuff, but I do have some paint stripper and other similar items that would be a huge bother to clean up and harm the kids if it got on their skin. This took a little re-organizing since my husband and I haven’t purchased any shelving units for our garage. We only have one high shelf in there, but I didn’t have anything dangerous stored on it before this, so I just switched the stuff spots on the shelf with the chemicals.
- MAKE SURE ALL OF YOUR LAWN, AND POWER TOOLS ARE PUT UP.
I made sure that I found all the pruners and shears and hung them up far beyond the kids’ reach. We have a push mower, so I just moved that outside for now, and I also made sure to take all the batteries out of the power tools and store everything in their respective cases.
With just a few minutes, you can have your garage in some semblance of safety for kids! Happy playing!