Corner protectors aren’t just for homes with little kids running around constantly bumping into things: I have learned through painful experience that the sharp corners on melamine-coated fiberboard easily rip through fabric and skin.

I run a round-off router bit over all my exposed woodwork edges whenever possible, but with glued melamine and some finished furniture you can’t do that. A few years ago I found some soft plastic corner cushions that unobtrusively provided excellent protection against scrapes and dented foreheads.

Recently I built a bunch of new shelves with exposed corners that I wanted to soften and I spent weeks looking for the same corner protectors. It turns out that my preferred solution is also by far the cheapest of the many competing products ($3.50 for eight), and that these are available only at Babies R Us.

Some people complain that the adhesive that comes with these is too weak to stand up to real children. If you want them to really stick you’ll need to attach them with Goop, silicone, or some other strong transparent adhesive.