Tot Loks

CFO's post on childproofing got me thinking about when we were childproofing our house, and the item that has had the best bang for the buck.

We went with Tot Loks when we installed cabinet locks. This turned out to be a wonderful investment, since Boo was opening traditional cabinet locks as soon as he could reach them. He still hasn't figured out how to open the Tot Loks, although he has tried a few times to open the cabinets with a marshmallow.

A few words of warning with the Tot Loks:

1. The Tot Lok starter kit comes with a guide to keep you from drilling a hole through your cabinet door. This guide slips. And where you would put your Tot Lok is not necessarily the same place you would want to put a decorative cabinet knob.
2. The metal in the lock part of the Tot Loks is not always of consistent magnet-receptive quality, meaning some of the locks don't work as well as the others. This can be solved by adding some extra metal inside the lock hole to provide extra conductivity. I wish I could tell you exactly how to go about this, but after I drilled a hole through the first cabinet I tried to install a lock in, I called upon someone more home-improvement savvy than I and had her install them, and she figured out the problem with the metal.
3. You WILL want replacement keys, they disappear at the most inconvenient times. I've found it increasingly difficult to just buy replacement keys - Home Depot and Lowe's don't carry them anymore, and I haven't been able to find them online. There is a company named Rev-A-Shelf that makes a very similar key, though, and they are a good three or four bucks cheaper than the Tot Lok keys.
4. Don't store your spare replacement keys in a cabinet that is locked.