Ikea Recalls 29 Million Chests and Dressers After 6 Children Die
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I wrote this is another thread, and I'll repeat it here. All tall dressers and bookcases, whether or not real wood, should be secured in a house where children may be tempted to climb. My son was a climber, and we had a house full of expensive, heavy, solid wood furniture. We tethered all of it to the walls. Better safe than sorry. I feel terrible for this child's loved ones, and I hope others will heed the warning that tall furniture does pose a tip over risk and should be secured.
We have a Malm dresser in each of my kids' rooms. When we bought them, we opted for the six drawer "wide and short" style (three large drawers alongside another three drawers) for the tipping factor, assuming it would be more stable than the "tall and narrow" style. I noticed all the tipping examples in the video were the "tall and narrow" style; it would be interesting to know if any of the child deaths were caused by the same six drawer "wide and short" style we have, or by the "tall and narrow" six drawer style. The news articles I had read before didn't seem to clarify which style had been a factor in the deaths.
We plan to keep our dressers but anchor them to the walls ASAP, as (aside from the tipping risk) we are happy with them and don't want the hassle of returning them and finding/buying another product. Ironically, we bought the first Malm dresser when our older child first moved out of his crib, as we previously had an old (non-Ikea) "tall and narrow" dresser in his room, and were worried about the tipping factor and wanted to switch to something we thought would be more stable.
It is a weight distribution problem. The front of the drawers are probably solid wood while everything else including the back is particle board or just cardboard. When you then open all the drawers, the weight extends too far out which causes the dresser to tip over. Look at pretty much any antique dresser, hutch, cabinet, etc and you will see that none of them needed to be anchored to the wall. This was because they used solid woods and the weight of the back of the dresser could support the weight of the front with all the drawers open. Of course the other problem is that most people will not go through the process to actually anchor their dresser to the wall.
Wrong. People always talk about this and it drives me nuts. They made plenty of cheap furniture back in the day.
I've cleaned out plenty of 50, 100 year old pieces that were cheap junk back then, with cardboard and other cheap materials.
The difference is that when it came time to clean out Granny's house, you kept the Stickley chest and sent on the cardboard backed piece to the dump or estate sale or fire pit. The Stickley piece you buy today will last for generations still.
Ikea cannot parent everyone. It's the parents responsibility to ensure their own household is safe. If they were dumb enough to not fully read the instructions where it says "you need to secure this to a wall" and provides the pieces, then they shouldn't be having kids in the first place.
Wrong. People always talk about this and it drives me nuts. They made plenty of cheap furniture back in the day.
I've cleaned out plenty of 50, 100 year old pieces that were cheap junk back then, with cardboard and other cheap materials.
The difference is that when it came time to clean out Granny's house, you kept the Stickley chest and sent on the cardboard backed piece to the dump or estate sale or fire pit. The Stickley piece you buy today will last for generations still.
And all the cheap materials they used 'back then' were a LOT better quality than the cheap materials used today. Heck. Particle board didn't start being used until after WW2 and wasn't used in abundance until the 50's. Even then, it was more expensive than regular wood, so cheap furniture items would use regular wood.
Ikea cannot parent everyone. It's the parents responsibility to ensure their own household is safe. If they were dumb enough to not fully read the instructions where it says "you need to secure this to a wall" and provides the pieces, then they shouldn't be having kids in the first place.
Exactly! Unfortunately, there will always be idiots that breed.
Anyway, this will set a bad precedent, as the majority of IKEAs furniture is lightweight particle board, and needs to be anchored to the wall. So if parents arent anchoring any of this furniture, will everybody sue?? Its ridiculous. We will lose half of Ikeas catalog in the states because of stupid people.
It happened in my house with drawer chest from another manufacturer. 3 year old opened three drawers and the chest (with a TV on top!!) slowly tipped over. He was besides the chest, not in front. so nothing happened to him.
By thew way, this is not a 'wood vs. particleboard" issue. Ikea particleboard is generally quite heavy, but some models have thinner, lighter panels and are riskier.
I have several of the Malm dressers, but no kids. The only time I've had a dresser tip was when I was putting laundry away and had all off the drawers open. The chest shifted a little, but I was standing right there, saw what was happening, and shut the drawers.
Today there are a lot of things children should not pull on or climb such as TV's,etc.
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