While those of us who work at home may dream of lounging away in isolated splendor, the reality is that our home office spaces are also living spaces where spouses and kids and pets and work all co-mingle. Small children love to play and explore, sticking small fingers into all kinds of spaces we would never think of sticking ours. So it’s important to make sure that our home office spaces are as child safe and pet safe as we can make them.

These ten steps to childproofing your home office will help ensure that you can all cohabit in your office space safely.

• Put the small stuff away
  Rubber bands, paper clips, paper - a lot of innocuous looking office supplies can be choking hazards to small children. So keep them put away in drawers rather than letting them sit around in the open where kids could pick them up and swallow them.

  Any supplies that are potentially poisonous or have dangerous fumes, such as glue or paint thinners, should be kept locked up.

• Secure the child-reach zone
  Toddlers especially love to grab things to steady themselves or pull themselves up. A good "child-test" when you're childproofing your home office is to crawl around it on your hands and knees to see what there is to grab at or what’s protruding just at child-height. Then secure anything that could topple over on your child and put corner cushions on your office furniture’s dangerous edges.

• Nix or fix the blinds
  Too many children have already been injured or killed because of the dangling cords of window blinds. The best way to avoid this hazard is to get rid of it; curtains or drapes will do the job just as well and look just as nice. If you're going to keep blinds in your home office, childproof them by looping up and securing the cords so children can’t get at them.

• Secure all cords and wires
  Loose cords and wires are a hazard to people of any age. Wires or cables near the perimeter of your home office can be taped or stapled down as close to walls as possible to decrease the chance that people will trip over them. If this isn't possible, you may want to invest in some cord covers. You can also clear up the cord mess by taking up extra cord with a Cable Turtle (or by folding, wrapping and tying the excess cord).

• Cover all the outlets
  When you're childproofing your home office, it's important to put outlet covers over all the exposed outlets. I don't know why kids find these so fascinating, but they do and it's a lot easier to cover the outlets than to spend chunks of your work time saying, "Don't touch! Don't touch!" If you have a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) in your office, you should get a cover for it, too.

  - Article by Wale Bello

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