Now that you’ve gotten your Christmas tree put up and every ornament is in its carefully-chosen location, you can relax and enjoy it’s beauty for the rest of the season, right? Not if you have kids under five in the house. With them around, getting the tree up is only half the battle, the other is keeping it safe until you take it down. Small kids love putting everything in their mouths, so all those shiny ornaments are free game as far as they’re concerned. Keep the tree, all the baubles that go on it, and your kiddos, safe with these tree protection tips.
- Make the tree inaccessible - A baby gate may not be part of the perfect picture in your mind of your carefully decorated tree, but it could keep the whole thing from crashing down. Barriers may be unattractive, but they can keep kids from reaching all those shiny objects.
- Rearrange ornaments - Put the most cherished and delicate ones at the top and use the softer, less expensive ornaments on the bottom third. Or you could go ornament-less and use something festive and non-breakable, like red bows, instead.
- Let them touch everything once - Give your curious kid some supervised “free time” to play with the tree where you show them the ornaments, explain what they are and let them touch them gently while you’re right there.
- Create your own “alarm system” - Trying to tell kids not to touch can be a joke as the more you tell some kids not to do something, the more they want to do it. But you can put bell ornaments around the lower half of your Christmas tree so every time your kid starts touching it, you’ll hear the DIY toddler alert system.
- Give them something else to play with - Like a small tree for their bedroom with its own tiny ornaments that won’t break and they can decorate it any way they want. Or put up a felt Christmas tree with ornaments they can rearrange as many times as they like.
Source: Lifehacker
Photo: Getty Images