Babyproofing the laundry room: the packets look like candy and the drum looks like a den

The door does most of the work

Every other room in a house has a reason to be open. A laundry room does not. That makes it one of the two or three places where the honest answer is to make the room itself off-limits rather than to childproof each object inside it, which is the same logic we use for the garage on how to childproof the garage.

A knob cover works on a round knob, a lever lock on a lever handle, and the distinction decides the product entirely - the lever version is ranked on best door lever locks. Fit it on the outside of the door so your child cannot work it from the hallway, and get into the habit of pulling the door closed behind you with the basket still in your hands.

One exception that matters: do not fit a lock that could trap a child inside, and do not use the laundry room as the place you let a toddler play while you fold. The whole point is that this room is for adults.

Detergent packets are the headline hazard

Single-dose laundry packets are the reason this page exists. They are brightly colored, squeezable, the size of a candy, they dissolve in a wet hand, and the contents are a concentrated detergent that can burn a mouth and an airway rather than simply upsetting a stomach. Poison centers have handled large numbers of exposures involving young children and these products since they arrived on the market.

The fix is not a latch. It is height and packaging:

Buy the tub with the child-resistant lid and keep it closed. Child-resistant means most children cannot open it quickly, not that none can - the distinction is explained on what is babyproofing.

Store the tub above adult shoulder height, not under the sink and not on the washer where a determined climber can reach it.

Never decant them into a jar or a bowl. A glass jar of pods on a shelf is the most dangerous ornament in the house.

Consider powder or liquid while you have a toddler. It is less convenient and it removes the hazard entirely, which is a trade a lot of families make for two years.

If an exposure happens, call Poison Control immediately rather than waiting to see what develops, and do not try to make the child vomit.

The washer and dryer drum

A front-loading machine with the door open is a cave at toddler height, and children have climbed into both washers and dryers. Keep both doors closed when the machines are not in use; if the washer gasket needs to air, open it only while you are in the room, and check the drum before every cycle without exception, including the one you start in a hurry on the way out of the house.

Most front-loaders have a control lock or child lock in the menu - use it, because it stops a curious toddler starting a cycle as well as changing one. Keep the laundry basket away from the machine door so it is not a step, and if the dryer vents low on an exterior wall outside, keep the play area clear of it: the air leaving a dryer is hot.

The shelf of chemicals

Bleach, oxygen boosters, fabric softener, stain remover, iron cleaner, sometimes paint and solvent that drifted in from the garage. These do not belong anywhere a child can reach, and in a laundry room the usual mistake is a low open shelf or a cupboard beside the machine at knee height.

Move first, lock second. Anything that is genuinely dangerous goes up high, out of the room if possible. What remains low - the basket of pegs, the spare bulbs, the iron - gets a strap lock on the cupboard, and the counting method for those is on how many cabinet locks do I need. Keep the iron and its cord out of reach entirely: it is a burn and a pull-down hazard in one object, and cord management is on how to babyproof cords.

What to buy

If your laundry is a closet or a hallway

Most apartments do not have a laundry room, they have a stacked pair behind bifold doors in a hallway, and that is harder rather than easier: the doors do not lock, the machines are in a corridor a child walks past twenty times a day, and there is nowhere high to put anything.

Three things work. Strap-lock the bifold handles together, which is exactly the job the adjustable strap locks do. Move the detergent out of the closet entirely, to a high kitchen cupboard, even though that is inconvenient. And treat the shelf above the machines as adult-only storage with nothing stacked at the front edge, since anything on it is directly above a child standing at the doors.

For the rest of a rented home, the no-damage toolkit is on babyproofing an apartment or rental, and the room-by-room order for the whole house is the babyproofing checklist.