Finding the ideal home to raise your family is only half the battle; you then need to find a way to future-proof your property and ensure that you create a safe environment for yourself and your children. This is particularly important as safety issues within the home can present themselves in a variety of different ways; for example, they could include: 

• Security problems, leaving your home vulnerable to theft. 
• Cybersecurity issues, wherein private details are leaked.
• General safety issues, where yourself or your children could run into an accident, or your health could be put at risk.

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

Thankfully, turning your home into a safe place does not need to be a difficult feat. You can use this checklist to get you started! 

• Begin by getting serious about home security. While you may have spent more time at home than ever before over the past year, it’s likely that you won’t be at home 24/7. As a result, you should take the necessary steps to ensure that your home is protected during your absence, particularly if you are heading on vacation or will be away from the property for a long period of time. For example, you could get your hands on a noise monitoring device for your property that will take your security measures to the next level by informing you whenever a disturbance occurs. You can even control them from your phone, giving you a chance to deal with problems as soon as they arrive or minimize the chance of damage occurring.

• Buy contents insurance. While purchasing home insurance will not necessarily keep your home safe, it will protect you financially should the worst occur. Therefore, it is definitely a necessary expense – especially if you have a lot of expensive items within your home. For example, if you are working from home, you may have a lot of high-tech equipment lying around, which could be incredibly expensive to replace. 

• Take safety seriously. You can help keep your family safe at home by ensuring that you take all health and safety measures seriously. For example, you should ensure that you have smoke alarms installed throughout your property. In addition, you should teach your children what to do if the alarms do go off. For example, you should teach them to stop what they are doing and make their way out of the house right away. Furthemore, when your children are particularly young, you can help make your home safer by baby-proofing the space. For example, you should install a gate on your stairs to stop them from climbing up (or down) themselves and tripping. 

• Teach them all about cybersecurity. While it may seem that your children are much more computer literate than you are, you must take some time out of your day to teach children the importance of good cybersecurity. For example, if they aren’t sure how to do so, they may accidentally leak some of the important information you have stored on your computers, such as credit card or banking details or your private address. Furthemore, you should also ensure that the content they are viewing online is age-appropriate. While this does not mean that you have to spend every moment standing over their shoulder watching them play the latest game, you should let them know which website they can and cannot use. You can also install security programs on your computer that block out certain words or inappropriate content so that they do not stumble across it accidentally. 

Inspect your property regularly. To keep your home safe, you need to ensure that it has not sustained any damage. For example, adverse weather conditions such as storms could damage the roof of your property. While this may not seem like a major safety hazard, it could allow moisture and damp to enter your home – which could develop into mold, which is an incredibly serious health hazard. As a result, you should ensure that you inspect your property regularly. If you do come across any faults, it’s important that you do not try to undertake any repairs that you are not qualified to complete. For example, while you may want to avoid the cost of hiring a plumber or electrician – you shouldn’t try to deal with electric or plumbing issues yourself as this is incredibly dangerous and could even cause the problem to worsen as opposed to resolving it. To put it simply, you should not jeopardize your own safety when trying to make your home a safer place.