Munchkin Numi

It’s about time. Those are the exact words that came out of my mouth when I first laid eyes on Munchkin’s Numi safety gate.
It’s so modern, so sleek, so sophisticated—so not what I am accustomed to in a baby gate.
Aesthetic appeal was a clear priority in the design of the gate, and it shows. The gate looks fantastic in our modern home, but even my friends with more traditional taste have ooh-ed and aah-ed over it while visiting for play dates. The thing about it is that, more than being hip or cool, it’s adult—and it’s not plastic. It’s not meant to entertain baby and it doesn’t need to draw attention. It blends seamlessly with our decor and performs its modest job day in and day out.
Of course, looks aren’t everything. The gate functions well too. It has a wall-mounted installation, which offers more peace of mind than a tension-dependent gate when it comes to safety and security. (Now, wall-mounted does mean that we will have holes to fill in our walls when we finally take it down, but with three little ones running around, I have a feeling we won’t have to worry about them for some time.) The gate also features an “Integrated Tuning System,” which helps get a just-right fit even if your walls aren’t at just-right angles—and honestly, whose are?
Opening the gate doesn’t take a rocket scientist and can be done with one hand. But my 4-year-old can’t quite figure it out, so it’s not too easy. I like that the gate can open in either direction and that it clicks closed with just a simple push. (There’s no lining up the gate on the tracks and locking it back into place. I don’t have time for that, and I bet you don’t either.) There’s also no bar running across the floor to worry about stubbing one’s toe on. And when we have parties, we can slip the gate out of the quick-release wall-mount and tuck it into the closet with hardly any evidence of it being there at all. So convenient!
The only drawback of the Numi? The price tag. At $140, it’s easily two to three times the price of the majority of safety gates. But you get what you pay for, right? For me, having an easy-on-the eyes gate is important. Ours is installed between our kitchen and living room, so I look at it for about 90 percent of my waking hours and walk through it about 90 times daily; plus, it’ll be up for probably another two, if not three, years. And frankly, I think my visual sanity is worth a pretty penny.
Dimensions: 26.5″ to 40″ W x 30.5″ H
Price: $140
To buy: babiesrus.com