You are going to spend the first part of a child's life teaching them to move around, but what happens when they can. Safety gear is marketed to parents who don't know how to handle a toddler and their curiosities. Some things are worth it, some aren't, but they all prey on your fear that your baby will kill itself if their world is not baby-proofed.
I focus how I interact with our toddler on teaching her how to be a functioning human. If I cover her in safety gear and corral her into a pen, that's not reaching my goal.
Outlet covers are nice to have around. We don't, however, use baby gates or those crazy puppy-pens they market for children. Your baby will explore, stick things from ground to mouth, and touch anything in reach. That does not mean that you have to move everything from reach. A one and a half year old can begin learning what is and is not appropriate to touch. While ours doesn't like hearing "no", she knows exactly what it means.
This treatment has created a pretty independent toddler. We don't do for her the things she can do herself, and she gets to make mistakes. She falls and bumps her head, scrapes her arm, and gets rug burn. When she was a baby, we propped her bottle on blankets sometimes, which sped her being able to hold her own bottle.
We learned quickly that what you do for your child without letting them mess it up, they won't learn to do for themselves. If they drop the heavy table book or dish on their toe, they know not to do that. Your child will fall, will cry, and will get dirty. None of these things are an emergency.
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