Best Home Gadgets for Toddler Parents

Have you ever had your toddler lock themselves in their bedroom, become hysterical, then absolutely scream-cry on the ground until you try to disassemble the door handle, fail at that, and burst open the door with a pry bar? No? Well we lived through it to tell you, fellow parent, to go ahead and get a non-lockable one now.

In DIYing our way through three houses now, our daughter has become pretty good at being responsible around tools and general chaos in the house, but as a spirited kid, she keeps us on our toes so here’s a list of the best home gadgets we’ve found for toddler parents.

Sink rinser

Okay, this one we actually installed about a month ago right before Baby #2 was born and it has been an absolute game changer. This handy sink rinser can be added in the hole where your handheld kitchen sprayer or soap dispenser goes and it connects right to your hot water line, making it wildly easy and honestly kind of fun to clean baby bottles. Have you ever tried to use those long bottle brushes then accidentally whiplashed yourself with the skanky old milk or formula water? A thing of the past.

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Installation of this thing honestly took about 15 minutes (super easy even for a non-DIYer), and has been used countless times since then. Bonus: It works great on rinsing wine glasses and water bottles, too!

Child proofing locks

We all know we should keep babies and toddlers out of cabinets, especially the ones with chemicals, but the big chunky plastic child proofing locks really ruin the aesthetic.

We use these magnetic ones that attach on the inside of cabinets doors or drawers and use a magnetic key to open so the locks stay hidden but effective. The bonus for us was that baby girl tried to open the doors a few times, couldn’t do it, then lost interest because she didn’t have a visible lock to mess with and figure out.

Note: These ones are a little more budget friendly – they don’t have the magnetic component, but they are still hidden within the cabinet door.

Door handles

Like we said earlier, learn from our mistakes. As soon as your little one transitions from crib to big kid bed, switch out their door handle to a non-lockable one like this. It’s a pretty quick and easy DIY with few tools involved and will save you a lot of stress in the long run.

Another option is to just reverse the handle so the lock is on the outside of the room, though you run the risk of visitors thinking you lock your child in their room, so there’s that issue.

Door chime

We’d gone about six months of our two-year-old being in a toddler bed and waking up every day without leaving her room until one day last week when we woke up to find her quietly playing in her playroom at about 7:30 a.m. having let herself out of her room at some point. Though it’s sweet that all she did was play with her puzzles, in all seriousness it was pretty stressful and there’s all kinds of things she could’ve gotten into with free rein of the house.

This door chime works kind of like a home security system on a smaller scale. You add the sensor to the toddler’s door and put the receiver somewhere nearby (by the bedside for us) so it’ll alert you if their door opens.

Light switch extender

Great for kids in the “I do it!” phase or for those of us who envision a day where your toddler wakes up, turns the light on, and entertains themselves quietly until you’re ready to get up on a Saturday morning.

Truly a 5-minute fix with zero DIY knowledge needed.

Wall mounted TV remote holder

If you’ve ever tried to fish a small TV remote out of the depths of the couch, weaving past petrified Play-Doh and who-knows-how-old Goldfish, you know why this is necessary.

Little Green Machine

This one is just a bonus because kids are disgusting, but I recently leveled up my deep cleaning after being influenced online and bought the Little Green Machine. It’s a carpet and upholstery cleaner that works like a vacuum but with a spray attachment to use water and cleaning solution on the tough-to-clean areas.

If you, like me, have couch cushions that don’t detach for machine washing, buy this, run it over your upholstered furniture and please send me photos of the absolutely murky water left in the tank. So gross, so satisfying.

If you’ve found any more handy home gadgets for toddler parents, feel free to send ‘em our way – we’re always looking for ways to hack our house against the strong-willed, stubborn, sweet angel we share a house with. Also, make sure to sign up to our newsletter where we share all of our favorite DIY updates.