If you have young kids or if your friends have young children and when they are attending parties at your house, you need to make sure your patio is a family friendly space. Nothing will ruin a fun summer afternoon on the patio than someone getting injured or hurt. Therefore, use these tips to make your patio safe for everyone. Here are some important points that you need to keep in mind when you prepare and decorate your patio for parties and activities that include the whole family.
Keep fragile items to a minimum
If you have young children, you can count on some glassware or a dish getting broken at some point. Little hands are just not always as cautious or as strong as their parents think they are. Broken glass can cause serious injuries for everyone, especially to children, so to keep the risk of injury low do not use real china dishes or glassware outdoors.
Having said that, that doesn't mean you are stuck with unreliable paper plates and cups though. You can buy durable, tough plastic dishes and cups that are just the right size for kids from most home depot. They can be washed and reused all summer but won't easily break no matter how many times they get dropped.
If you still want to use china for the adults and keep the plastic for the kids, then put the plastic wares somewhere that is easy for kids to reach and keep the adult dishes behind the bar or up on a high table where kids won't be able to reach them.
It is strongly advisable to keep any other glass objects like candleholders, lanterns or fragile decorative objects up as high as possible to prevent someone from knocking into them and shattering them all over the patio.
Do not use patio furniture that folds up
It is more often a child has been seriously injured when a plastic folding chair or chaise lounge folded. It is the last thing you want to see when child ended up on the ground or trapped in the furniture, so always choose suitable patio furniture. If you have kids in the house, don't use any type of folding furniture on your patio to avoid possible injuries.
Make sure all the furniture that you do have is strong enough to support both adult and child. If you are using wrought iron furniture, there should not be any spikes, arrows or sharp edges in the design on the furniture that might injure a child. Choosing your patio furniture is important when you have kids at home.
Set up a kid's section on the patio
No matter how hard you try it is quite hard to keep kids away from things around the patio that might injure them. When you have adults and children mingling and playing at a backyard barbecue, there is bound to be hot food that can be spilled, breakables and possibly accidents waiting to happen. Hence, the best approach to keep your kids safe is to set up a special kids' area on the patio.
This may be a challenge, if you don't have a large patio. But if you have a decent size patio you can utilize furniture or small screens or even baby gates to apportion a small part of the patio. An excellent and simple way to build a kids' play space is to use benches to segment off the patio. You can make the benches useful by placing some storage underneath and put some cushions on top. You can keep all kind of things such as toys, balls, kites and other outdoor toys inside the benches. Apart from that, you can also store some plastic child friendly cups, dishes and silverware in the benches so that when it is time for the kids to dine, they can use their own safe plastic dishes instead of the adult plates and glasses.
Some sturdy child size chairs and tables in the kids section will be useful so that the kids have their own place to dine that is safely away from the grill and all the hot food. You will be surprised that most children love having their own separate area to play in. Most importantly, you know that they are safe and can enjoy themselves without getting hurt.
When you set up a children area on the patio, it is best to set it up on the outermost edge of the patio closest to the yard. This is because if you set it up too near the house, then the kids will obstruct the traffic in and out of the house. Also, if you set it up too close to the cooking area, high chances they could get hurt or injured. Hence, if their area is closest to the open yard, then they will have easy access to the yard where they can scamper around and play safely.
Inspect your walkways and floors
Younger children that are not too stable on their feet might end up tripping onto uneven flagstones, rocky gravel paths, or even a simple cracked concrete floor. You must not take these small things for granted. Keep your patio properly maintained and replace missing stones or patch cracks and holes immediately when you spot them. Keep all your walkways and the floor of the patio clean and level to prevent injuries.
