Ditch the baby gate

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When I had my first baby in Korea, we did not have stairs and we had a pretty open floor plan so if there was a room we didn’t want the baby to have access too we just shut the door. The only thing we needed to prevent his little hands from getting into was our TV cabinet. He had a habit of crawling over and turning off my husband’s Xbox that was sitting in an opening in that cabinet. So instead of the traditional baby gate we went with a freestanding pet gate that stood up in front of the tv cabinet and blocked his access.

Flash forward to a a new home and our second baby 3 years later... our new home has stairs and does not have as open of a floor plan. From where I sit on the couch if someone goes into the kitchen, I can't see them anymore or what they're doing. Which I don’t have to tell you is problematic with a crawling baby. I originally couldn't find our freestanding gate, so I went out and bought a traditional pressure mount gate for the stairs at least. What I was left with was awful marks on the walls that won't come all the way off even with a magic eraser, and a flimsy gate that didn't do its job no matter the amount of pressure applied by my husband or me to the gate. I ended up tossing it and searching high and low through some of our unopened moving boxes and finally found the freestanding gate again.

It has left no mark, can be easily moved from one spot to another in the house to block room access or stair access, and can't be knocked over or climbed over (yet) by the baby. It's also easy to break down and put back together if the length needs to be adjusted, or if it needs to be stored or packed up for another move.

Below is a link to the exact freestanding pet gate we use:

To add to this when I purchased ours in 2019 it was only $88 so there has definitely been a markup [possibly supply/demand? and people wanting more freestanding versus the pressure mount or screw mounted gates], but with that said I would buy, buy, and buy again even at the new price.

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