Saftey 1st Bi-Fold Door Locks

I didn't do a lot of research on these before I bought them. It was one of those spur of the moment purchases at Babies-R-Us. Prior to living in a real house we lived in a condo that had no bi-fold doors. All the doors we had were the regular kind with the round handles that most kids have issues with. At that point our DS was so young that doors weren't a major interest yet. Last December when we moved into our current house I saw that I was going to have a few more issues with controlling where my son could and could not go.

One of those places was the pantry. Now I have a nice large pantry with bi-fold doors and I don't just keep food in there. Glass bottles of wine are on the floor at the bottom of the pantry as are some of the larger "small" appliances and over-sized boxes of garbage bags from BJ's. These are not things that I wanted or want my son to get into. I saw these Saftey 1st Bi-fold Door Locks as a solution and I have to say that so far they have served their purpose quite well. Now if you follow the link to Amazon.com you'll find that most of the reviews are negative claiming that they don't work on particular doors or (my favorite) are inappropriate for shorter people. Yes, these go on top of the bi-fold doors. If you can't reach the top of the door then you need to use a different product, clearly. I have standard bi-fold doors, the contractor's special, and I can tell you that these worked just fine.

These are made with a little knob to tighten the lock to your door. My door was sufficiently large that I did not need to tighten it at all. My son has very rarely exhibited the strength needed to make them pop off the door. However on occasion I have forgotten that they are on and I have pulled the door open and caused the silly thing to pop off. It doesn't necessarily bother me. For one, this has happened several times and the lock has not broken. Second, having the lock pop off is better than it breaking or worse breaking the door or the door track. 2.50$ for a new plastic lock or 50-100$ for a new door and track....it's not brain surgery folks.

***I feel that it's important to say this though in light of a lot of negative reviews (including my own) of baby safety items.It's important that nothing will keep a truly determined child out of anything. All of these "child-proofing" measures that we take are really nothing more than very good child deterrents. They do not replace the watchful eye of a parent! Don't think that they do.***