3 Kid-Friendly Furniture Swaps
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When my husband and I first started to furnish our house, unfortunately, we did not keep future kids in mind. It really didn’t come to mind that our furniture was not exactly the safest option for little kids until we brought home our first born from the hospital years later. Though he was not at all close to the walking stage yet, I began to imagine my son climbing up on our glass table and all the other potential dangers that may occur. Since that moment, my husband and I knew we needed to make some kid-friendly furniture swaps if we wanted peace of mind.
A Cozier Couch
The first furniture swap that we made was swapping out our black, leather couch with metal legs (I know, this couch sounds a lot edgier than me), for a comfy, Modular LovSac Sactional Couch in our living room. We wanted something less hard and cold and more all around soft for those days up ahead that we could anticipate our baby running into. To this day, we have never regretted our choice to go with a LoveSac couch because we were able to add to it as our family grew, we were able to purchase hidden storage to help keep our living room neat, and the covers are washable! Having washable covers just adds an extra safety net when your baby becomes a toddler and spills or the unavoidable potty training days. It also gives you the flexibility to change the color of your couch without having to buy a brand new couch in the future. Overall, we love and 10/10 recommend this couch to anyone with small kids or looking to grow your family!
The Right Dining Table
As I mentioned earlier, we used to have a glass dining table. It was beautiful, but it was an accident waiting to happen. Instead, we opted to get yet another modular piece of furniture. We ended up swapping out our glass dining table for a wooden Transformer Table. Though it still has corners and would definitely still hurt if you bumped into it, we are able to tuck it away when we are not using it. We only really used our dining table when we had guests over, so tucking away our dining table just made sense. That way, we were able to create more space in our living room/dining area for our children to play on a normal basis and still have a larger dining table available for when we need it for larger family gatherings.
Easy to Clean Barstools
I will forever love the look and feel of our old barstools, but like the other previously mentioned furniture, they had to go. The metal legs had exposed corners anytime you would swivel the seat and the faux leather was soft and comfortable, but hard to keep clean now that we have kids. As anyone with a toddler would know, kids’ hands can get messy, with so many things. It got harder and harder to clean the grease marks on these seats. When it came time to replace our bar stools due to some wear and tear, we decided to go for a more simple look, with no fabric or hard to clean surfaces. We decided to get a more classic looking round, wooden bar stool from Nathan James. Not only was the price point within our price range, we were more than pleased with the high quality of these wooden seats. We ultimately decided to go for the more classic wooden bar stool look because they are just easier to clean. Wiping up messes from our children was 100x easier than trying to get grease off of our prior faux leather seats. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find our exact barstools on the Nathan James website, but I’m sure you’ll find something that fits your taste if you browse their available selections.
Bonus Swap: NextStep2 Toilet Seat
This is a bonus swap because it is more of a plumbing fixture accessory than a piece of furniture. But, it was still a notably convenient swap after having children, so I still wanted to give the toilet seat with a built-in toddler potty seat a quick shout out! We’ve tried the separate potty seats, the detached potty adapters, and a toilet seat with an attached adapter. And, I have to say, the regular toilet seat with an attached adapter takes the cake! The separate, stand alone potty was just another thing to empty and clean after use, not to mention, it always seemed to take up a lot of space when space is already limited in our bathroom. And, the detached potty adapters seem to always get in the way when sitting on them and a lot of the time, no one really knew where to put them when an adult needed to use the toilet. The solution to all of our problems was the NextStep2 Toilet Seat! Not only was it space saving, it’s the perfect size for kids and adults, it has a slow close feature to prevent accidental slamming and it’s easy to clean!
Making the switch to more kid-friendly furniture a couple years ago made life with little kids that much better. As a parent, you can’t help but worry about anything and everything regarding the well being of your kids. Sometimes trading in some of your old things for something different is about safety as much as it is about convenience. If you do decide to make some kid-friendly furniture swaps, at least you’ll know that there are some options out there that will be able to grow with your family. Also, if you are still in the early days of parenthood, looking for other ways to better child proof your home, you can check out one of my previous blogs, “Baby Proofing Ideas.”
