How many cabinet locks do I need? Count hazards, not doors, and the answer is usually six to twelve

How to count your own

Do this with a notepad, at the child's height, in the order that matches the hazard rather than the room. It takes ten minutes and it is the difference between buying one pack and buying three.

One: find the poisons. Poison Control handles a huge volume of calls about young children and household products every year, and the products are always in the same places: under the kitchen sink, under the bathroom sink, the laundry shelf, and a cupboard in the garage. Every one of those gets a lock. Count them. The medicines are the exception to the counting, because they do not stay in one cupboard - they go in a box, and the boxes are ranked on best medicine lock boxes.

Two: find the blades and the heavy things. The knife drawer, the drawer with the mandolin and the skewers, the cupboard where the cast iron lives at head height. Two or three.

Three: find the heat and the appliances. The oven door and the dishwasher are their own products rather than cabinet locks - see best oven and dishwasher locks - and the fridge may need one too. Do not count those against your cabinet-lock pack.

Four: stop. The cupboard with the plastic storage containers, the pan drawer, the linen cupboard: leave them. A toddler emptying the Tupperware cupboard while you cook is not a hazard, it is childcare. Leaving two or three cabinets deliberately openable also takes the pressure off the locked ones, because a child who can open something is less interested in the ones that will not move.

The other half of this count is relocation, which costs nothing. Moving the bleach from under the sink to a high shelf removes a hazard and a lock from the list at the same time. That is the first move on babyproofing on a budget and on babyproofing the kitchen.

Why a pair of doors takes one lock

This is where people buy twice what they need. Two cabinet doors that meet in the middle with knobs or handles side by side are locked together by one device: a strap lock or a U-shaped lock looped over both handles stops either door opening. A single door, or a door whose neighbor is a drawer, needs its own lock fitted to the frame.

So the count is locations, not doors. A kitchen with twelve doors and eight drawers might need five locks: one across the pair under the sink, one on the cleaning cupboard, one on the knife drawer, one on the corner cupboard with the heavy pans, and one spare for the bin cupboard.

The exception is magnetic locks, which fit inside each door and work per door rather than per pair. A double-door cabinet takes two magnetic locks. That is the hidden cost of the invisible lock type, and it is worth knowing before you compare a 12-pack of magnetic locks with a 12-pack of straps; the full trade-off is on magnetic vs adhesive cabinet locks.

Which pack to buy

Pack sizes side by side

Read the compatibility row before the pack size. Roving Cove states its magnetic locks are not compatible with metal cabinets; Safety 1st's adhesive latches need a smooth, sealed front; the Wappa straps will go on almost anything flat including appliances. The pack that fits your doors beats the pack with the best price per lock.

Buy a few spares, and why

Two or three more than your count, for three reasons that all show up in the first month.

The first lock you fit is practice. The adhesive pads on these products are single-use, so a lock repositioned twice is a lock thrown away. The second reason is that a count made standing up misses something - the bin cupboard, the shoe cupboard with the polish, the drawer where the batteries live, which is a serious hazard in its own right because of button cells. The third is that cabinet locks get removed and replaced when you redecorate or when a visiting relative defeats one.

What not to do is buy a 30-pack to be safe. Fitting all thirty takes an afternoon, trains everyone in the house to prop doors open, and ends with half of them hanging off by spring. Buy the count plus spares, fit them properly with the surfaces cleaned and the full cure time given, and do the rest of the kitchen only if the child proves you wrong. The method for fitting is on how to install cabinet locks, and the ranked locks by type are on best cabinet locks for babyproofing.