Cooking with your kids is a great way to build your relationship together, get them excited about food, learn life skills, and develop healthy habits. However, the kitchen can also be one of the most dangerous rooms in your home. Knowing this, if you are wanting to have your kids helping you cook in the kitchen, there are some precautions you should take to keep them safe.

To help you see just what these things are, here are three ways to make your kitchen a safe place to cook with your kids.

Turn On All The Lights

One thing that can make cooking with your kids much easier is to have good lighting. When your kids can easily see what they’re doing and what’s around them, they’re less likely to have some kind of accident. In case of a dimly lit kitchen, managing kids along with your culinary skills can be quite tough. To avoid such situations, you can refer to an electrical service’s website where you can hire professionals and have them install more lights.

If you already have great task lighting and overhead lighting in your kitchen, that’s wonderful. But if your kitchen isn’t as well lit as it should be, you may want to consider adding some cove lighting or smaller task lighting to help make it easier for your kids to see exactly what’s going on on the counters of your kitchen.

Keep Dangerous Items Out Of Reach

Cooking with your kids doesn’t mean that you should let them take the lead on any of the dangerous tasks involved in your preparation. So to keep their bodies safe, it’s vital that you keep dangerous items out of their reach.

According to Rebecca Edwards, a contributor to SafeWise.com, things like knives, cleaning supplies, plastic wrap, and hot items should all be pushed far away from the edge of your counter or kept in a separate area from where you’re working together. Then, if you need these items, you should use them away from your children so there’s no temptation for them to touch or handle items that they’re not ready for.

Make Clean Up Easy

While cooking with your kids can be fun and a great experience, it can also get very messy very quickly.

Knowing this, Jessica Daily, a contributor to Good Housekeeping, recommends that you set up your kitchen so that any clean up with your kids will be as easy as possible. To do this, you should try to not use materials that are too porous for your countertops or flooring or that have too many little nooks and crannies that are hard to clean. You should also try to clean as you go so that your kids not only learn how to cook with you, but that they also learn how to clean up after themselves, too.

If you’re wanting to get your kids into the kitchen to cook with you more often, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you make your kitchen a safe place for them to spend time.

Anna Jones
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