Mill Valley Jr. Children's Dresser Sold by Rooms To Go Is Recalled Due to Tip-Over Risk

The piece is the first product recalled for violating new STURDY Act requirements

Consumer Reports Investigative Reporter, Lauren Kirchner.

By Lauren Kirchner
Investigative Reporter

May 3, 2024

Recalled Mill Valley Jr. six-drawer youth dresser in Cherry

Rooms To Go recalled a children’s dresser on Thursday, saying the six-drawer piece is unstable if it is not properly anchored to a wall. If the dresser tips over, it can trap, suffocate, or otherwise injure a child, the retailer says.

The dresser has the brand name Mill Valley Jr. and comes in cherry or white. About 200 of the dressers have been sold, according to the recall notice, and Rooms To Go is contacting everyone who has bought one directly. The retailer says customers should stop using this dresser immediately and keep it away from children. Rooms To Go is not offering a refund but will send customers a replacement dresser and remove a recalled one for free.

The recall notice did not include any reports of injuries or deaths involving this dresser. Rooms To Go did not respond to questions from Consumer Reports about how the company learned of the potential tip-over issue or why the retailer is offering a replacement but not a refund.

This is the first furniture recall tied explicitly to new, stricter safety requirements that are now in effect thanks to a 2022 federal law written to prevent deadly furniture tip-overs.

The Stop Tip-Overs of Unstable, Risky Dressers on Youth (STURDY) Act required the Consumer Product Safety Commission to set mandatory standards for dressers and other furniture–so that they had to be sturdier and be tested more rigorously, and be sold with strong warning labels. Those new standards went into effect in September 2023.

Hundreds of young children have died and thousands have been injured from tip-overs in the past two decades. Most of the deaths involved children under the age of 6. The STURDY Act came about after years of advocacy from parents who had lost children to furniture tip-over incidents, and from safety experts, including those at Consumer Reports.

One group that pushed for the STURDY Act was Parents Against Tip-Overs. Its chair, Brett Horn, has advocated for stricter furniture safety standards ever since his 2-year-old son Charlie was killed in 2007 when a dresser fell on him. Horn says the STURDY Act was a “huge win” for safety, but recalls like this show that there is still more work to be done.

“Parents Against Tip-Overs was disappointed to learn there are still non-compliant products on the market well after the effective date of the STURDY Act,” Horn says. He notes that furniture makers helped develop the new regulations, “and their compliance is mandatory.”

Gabe Knight, a policy analyst at Consumer Reports, says, “Federal law now requires companies to sell dressers that resist tipping over, and we strongly urge Rooms To Go to offer a full refund to anyone who purchased a recalled product,” adding, “We are glad to see the CPSC enforcing this lifesaving law, and hope the agency continues to send a strong message to manufacturers with noncompliant furniture.”

To learn how to properly anchor furniture to a wall to prevent tip-overs in your home, watch this video from Consumer Reports.

Recall Details

Product recalled: Six-drawer clothing dressers, in white or cherry, with model numbers C2192Y-N04 and C2193Y-N04.

Sold at: Rooms To Go stores nationwide and RoomsToGo.com from December 2023 through January 2024, for about $450.

The problem: These dressers violate the performance requirements of the STURDY Act. They are unstable if not properly anchored to the wall, posing tip-over and entrapment hazards.

The fix: If you have this dresser at home, immediately stop using it, keep children away, and contact Rooms To Go for a replacement dresser. Rooms To Go will schedule a delivery of the free replacement and remove the recalled one.

How to contact the manufacturer: Complete the registration form on the Rooms To Go recall page. Call the company at 855-688-0919 for more information.

To report a dangerous product or a product-related injury, go to SaferProducts.gov.

Lauren Kirchner

Lauren Kirchner is an investigative reporter on the special projects team at Consumer Reports. She has been with CR since 2022, covering product safety. She has previously reported on algorithmic bias, criminal justice, and housing for the Markup and ProPublica, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting in 2017. Send her tips at lauren.kirchner@consumer.org and follow her on X: @lkirchner.