Safety 1st provides us with the perfect fit!

When Kid began to crawl and explore more around our house, we made the necessary trip to Babies R’ Us to purchase some safety gates. We wanted to keep the hardware mounted gates to a minimum, and one of the gates we picked up for this purpose was the Safety 1st Perfect Fit Gate.

This gate is very versatile. It can fit doorways from 28 to 42” and can be either hardware or pressure mounted. It stands 26” high and instead of bars, it has translucent panels to hinder a child’s climbing up or standing on the bottom rung of the gate. It is fairly lightweight and can be carried via its handle from room to room. We purchased ours for $29.99.

We have used this gate at the bottom of our stairs and in a couple of doorways. Obviously, we only use the pressure mounted option, so the gate doesn’t allow a person to walk through while it is up. If you hardware mount the gate, you’ll have the ability to slide it open without removing the whole gate. But we purchased it as a temporary barrier, so having to remove it to get through is not a problem for us.

The gate is very simple to set up. The handle on the top is a 3-in-1 lock, release and adjust feature. Simultaneously pulling back on the slide button on the top and pushing down on the handle will lock the gate into place. Pulling back on the same button while pulling up on the handle will unlock the gate. When unlocked, a bright red unlock symbol is visible as a warning. To adjust the gate, you just push the adjust button on the side of the handle and pull up on the handle. You can then slide the gate to increase or decrease its length.

This gate is named the Perfect Fit because it has a unique side feature that allows it to adjust to fit uneven openings. At the bottom of our stairs we have a baseboard running along one side but not the other. We are able to fit the gate to that opening because there is an extension along one side that can be pushed in or pulled out at the bottom to fit snugly along the uneven wall.

We’ve been using this gate for about 4 months now and it’s holding up quite well. I love that it’s lightweight enough that I can carry Kid in one arm and the gate by its handle in the other to move it from room to room. Once we got the hang of its set-up, it only takes either me or my husband about a minute to pressure mount it to any opening we use it in. We usually remove it when we need to get through, but it is short enough that I can step over it if need be and I’m 5'4".

Kid has been unable to climb up the panels or to use the gate as a step stool at all. He can easily use the panels to get to a standing position, and the gate is strong enough to stay in place while he does so. However, if he starts hanging on the gate, as he sometimes does, the top will budge ever so slightly once in awhile. I would not trust this gate at the top of the stairs or anywhere where he could push it hard and get seriously hurt by falling. In doorways and at the bottom of our stairs, it is perfect. As an added bonus, our two cats are easily able to jump over it so we don’t have to worry about confining them to the area in which it is set up. Obviously, if you’re trying to keep extra-springy animals out, this is probably not the gate for you. But for our use in keeping Kid safe, it has been excellent.