Beware the dishwasher. My niece wandered out of the kitchen with a big knife once as a toddler.
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Oh, OK, it’s my child ha ha. Chaos destruction child. Some of this is unavoidable, you have to watch them like a hawk or they will destroy and climb and pull everything out. There are a few products though that have helped.
Also, I think you’ve seen pictures of all the insane climbing toys and things we have in our front room so that we can redirect instead of just saying no don’t do that. And sending you the best wishes. At 4 1/2 now she does not empty things or climb things in destructive ways anymore. I think it’s subsided somewhere between three and 3 1/2 for us.
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Lots of decoys helped us. Not even toys, but lots of “real” stuff they can mess with. Like a spray bottle of water, or a basket of shoes, even rolls of toilet paper if you just stuff the mess into a basket. Rearranging kitchen cabinets so light, durable things like measuring cups and metal mixing bowls were the first things he could grab.
It’s very personality dependent. Spore had fewer than 10 times where he really caused chaos and grew out of this by 2.5. TR, on the other hand, is literally dancing on tables now and shaping up to be more of a handful.
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We had to give up gates by 20mo with B1 and we tried things like a doormonkey. But then we just locked up the knives and cleaning products and meds and it really helped him to be a free range child, fiercely independent and in touch with our primal parenting.
It really helped our family resiliency to lean into that ancestral knowledge and be prepared when B2 turned 1 and was found on top of the kitchen table. As experienced parents we redirected him to climb the lilac tree that died due to poor water management in the suburbs. In fact, redirecting from the closedness of our danger filled open plan house into the expanse of our postage stamp lawn let us give each child 19 outdoor hours a day while we cocooked on an open solo stove using zero carbon wood logs.
Seriously LBF I HATE for you that the gates aren’t working. Remember, before gates we just tied the danger tots up. Constant vigilance securing and locking stuff. And it’s okay to yell for urgent safety stuff like when they think the oven door is a jungle gym. We have both sides of the stairs secured with extra tall gates and no one is breaching the top one, but we might have to ditch the bottom one soon. Everything we own is wrecked. Everything. If you go on adaptive forums you can sometimes find better locks- my SIL has crazy door and fridge locks
Oh and make sure you store your toilet brush and plunger on a top shelf 
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Can I jump on this for my own gain? @BiblioFeroz and anyone else, when do kids become impossible to contain with gates? I need to contain my baby and the other nanny share baby when she is here, and wanted to do a gate set up in my now dining room. The plan is to do nanny share until they are 18ish months old.
If it matters, my baby is seven months old (can you believe), has been on the later end of normal for gross motor stuff, 50th percentile length, and is more of a hold me and talk to me baby than a let me run free baby compared to same aged babies. But of course who knows what the future holds!
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This is super kid dependent. My five year old just figured out our gate mechanism, and wouldn’t dream of climbing over it. The three year old still can’t get in and out of the gates but would probably climb out if we left her there trapped long enough.*
*our gates are only for toy containment at this point. Mostly we leave them open but if I close them the kids couldn’t get out until recently.
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Co-signed. I had a sign on my plunger that said “do not set this on the floor unless you want a toddler to think it’s a lollipop” 
and had to store it on a counter when guests came (my ILs plug toilets a lot. Whyyyyy. Anyway, that way it was out but mostly out of reach).
I love those magnet locks so much though. We had (have) two “sacrificial cupboards” and would lock the rest. The magnets are great because you can easily disable them if you’re doing a big cooking project or whatever.
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Depends on the kid and the type of gate. I know that’s super not helpful. Those little plastic lattice ones stopped Latte at crawling age, but she had very little experience after that, we do the retractables for the stairs and never gave her a chance to test them- they are more for accidental silly runs fall prevention, and dog management. So also exposure plays in- how much time is spent contemplating and testing the gate.
Much like cribs tbh, there’s a years long range across which kids can climb out, and many just opt never to try.
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For the lower gates, any style, they stopped working around a year if there was an object to use for climbing. 18mo to rattle in a scary way, 2 to open
The high gates are lasting better but our “easy” tall gate has like 4 additional features for security and our other one is an oldschool pale wood ugly lift and slide screws in I can barely do it kind.
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We have a screw in regalo stair gate that’s still up in our house for fall prevention too (there is much running right next to the top of the stairs) and have the same experience. It’s not there to keep kiddo away from “fun” we are either upstairs together or downstairs together so it’s been fine.
@Bernadette My kid is early on gross motor skills but is a rule follower at heart and we kept up the gates for a while. We did get metal nice ones that were pressure installed. We took down the one in the kitchen when Pipsqueak realized she could open the pocket door on the other side and get into the kitchen at Will. We left the gate at the bottom of the stairs until she was like…2? 2.5? Because it was there and fine and she didn’t mess with it.
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They sell a silicone insert for that brand that makes it into a regular potty that you can dump. Reusable Collapsible Travel Potty Liner : Kalencom Potette Plus Potty Liner for Home Use with The 2-in-1 Potette Plus Potty (Sold Separately) (Pink) https://a.co/d/hdunk0T
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Our 19-mo-old has not climbed a gate yet 
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Neither has my tall athletic 21mo. I’m just borrowing trouble!
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Thanks to everyone for sharing philosophy and practical suggestions!
Maybe she’ll never defeat the gates. I think in the short term, we should:
-have a plan for what we might need to buy
-create a cuckoo cabinet or drawer and secure the breakables
-demystify the kitchen by allowing supervised access to it when we are not cooking- this will also help identify “hot spots”
It’s tough because we have SO LITTLE storage space. There is no high shelf on which to store the plunger. Maybe we take it out to the garage? We have one in the downstairs bathroom that we could always go and get, ditto for the toilet brush. (She is much further away from being able to access THAT bathroom.)
Follow up question: Do y’all consider Corelle dishes and ceramic mugs to be “fragile”?
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I wish we had space for more of those cool things! The boys really love @Economista’s ceiling swings. But our living room is SO SMALL. At least we have a set of climbing blocks, and she loves to go outside in all weather so she does get her energy out.
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I consider corelle to be too fragile for a toddler. It doesn’t break often but when it does it’s a mess. The bottom cupboards were pots and pans, plastics and wood.
And even then, one toddler took a pot lid with a wooden knob and slid it into the broiler drawer of the stove and the next time I turned the oven on it caught on fire.
It helped that we lived in smallish apartments and I could always hear them, but also I kept anything even remotely dangerous very high up or in the garage.
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Is she a dropper, or a thrower? And what material is the floor. Drop from bottom drawer onto wood? Ehhh maybe fine. Second drawer, throw, tile? Breakable fosho.
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Could you put a hole/rope in the handle and put it on a hook high up?
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How do you change a baby especially without them getting poo everywhere when they are in a “when you pay me down to change me I am going to scream and do barrel rolls” stage
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My method is: on the floor, leg over their chest to pin them, as quickly as possible. 
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