Evenflo Summit Easy Walk-Thru Gate

There’s really nothing that compares to seeing your son on one side of a newly-installed baby gate, pounding on the bars, staring at you, his face a mish-mash of incredulity, rejection and confusion. It’s totally worth the price.

Say what you will about baby gates, they are effective. Well, I can only speak for the Evenflo Summit Easy Walk-Thru model that we have quarantining our kitchen from the rest of our apartment. In a matter of less than thirty minutes, our little roamer was less free-range, more of a nester. Contained.

Of course humans raised children for years before the genius of the baby gate emerged. It’s not necessary, but it is a nice form of security. Like insurance, you’re buying peace of mind, but you’re also giving yourself a break.

Before getting the Summit, little one would usually finish mealtime, and I would attempt to clean up, wash dishes, what-have-you. And he would quickly bolt from eyeshot, rustle up some trouble within two minutes flat. Dishes get crusty, coffee cold, etc. Those days are over, I’m happy to announce. We are now on Daddy’s schedule.

The gate is not only child-proof, it’s become a veritable Rubik’s cube for adult visitors as well. The unlocking is actually simple and ergonomically friendly—you push one button on either side and then push down on the handle to open it. It takes some getting used to, though.

The gate tells you with red and green indicators when it is secure and when it is exposed—an added safety feature. Installation, as I mentioned, took us about a half-hour. Not going to lie, we watched a video, and I’m glad we did. It’s not hard, but there is only one way to do it, and it involves spinning the nut inside the washer. Spinning the washer (as we did at first, of course) will make you feel pretty silly pretty quickly.

But once we figured out the nut situation, it was a piece of cake. You simply measure your chosen doorway to determine if you need the extension (pops right on) or not. Then line it up, unscrew the nuts and then tighten the washers and you’re good to go.

We over-tightened it first, too. You’ll know you’ve done this because there will be no slack for the locking mechanism and it won’t able to perform its inherent duty. But we simply loosened the nuts—easy fix, and then we were all set. Though we’ve had no cause to move it, this would surely be easy to do. The gate also swings both ways, which is a surprisingly useful feature.

My parents had doggy gates years ago that were easy to hop over (for me, not the dogs), but the Summit is just tall enough to discourage this activity, which is good. It does have a one-inch riser at the bottom that takes some getting used to—watch your step. As such it’s open at our house probably 95 percent of the time. But that 5 percent when it’s closed? Totally worth it.

Price:$40
To buy: Amazon.com