Child-Safe Cleaning Products: What We Use in Your Home

"Child-safe" appears on a lot of bottles that are, at best, child-safer than bleach. It isn't a regulated term in Australia the way "organic" is for food - no one has to prove anything to print it. So it comes down to what's in the bottle, and to a couple of things on the label that are regulated and that you can check in about five seconds.

How to read an Australian cleaning label

Two things are worth looking for, and both are legally controlled:

• Signal words and poison schedules. Household products carrying CAUTION (Schedule 5) or POISON (Schedule 6) under the Poisons Standard are scheduled for a reason. A product with neither is a materially different thing to one with either.
• Hazard pictograms and phrases. "Causes serious eye damage", "Causes skin irritation", "Harmful if inhaled" are standardised GHS statements, not marketing copy. A bottle covered in them is not the one you want on a high chair tray.

You can also just ask. Any professional cleaner can produce a Safety Data Sheet for every product they use - it's a legal requirement for workplace chemicals in Australia. If a company can't or won't, that answer is the information.

What we avoid in homes with kids

• Chlorine bleach and ammonia-based cleaners - strong respiratory irritants, and dangerous if the two ever meet in a bathroom. We simply don't carry both.
• Caustic and strongly acidic products - drain openers and heavy limescale removers. Effective, and the most common cause of serious chemical burns in home cleaning.
• Heavy synthetic fragrance - it cleans nothing. It masks. It's also one of the more common triggers for kids with asthma or eczema, and a "fresh" smell after a clean is often just fragrance sitting where the dirt used to be.
• Antibacterial sprays used everywhere by default - routine surface disinfection of a whole house isn't necessary in a healthy home, and it's a lot of unnecessary exposure.

What's actually in our kit

For the vast majority of a house, three things do the work:

• A pH-neutral, low-odour general surface cleaner for benches, tables, high chairs, toy shelves, door handles and everywhere small hands end up. No signal word on the label.
• Microfibre and hot water. Underrated. A quality microfibre cloth with hot water mechanically removes the large majority of surface soil and microorganisms with no chemistry at all - which is exactly what you want on the surfaces a toddler licks.
• An enzyme or plant-derived degreaser for kitchens, given the proper dwell time rather than sprayed and instantly wiped.

Stronger targeted products - oven degreaser is the obvious one - stay for specific jobs only, used with ventilation, rinsed off, and never on a surface a child will touch within a few hours. We tell you when we've used one and which room it was in.

Three practical habits worth more than any product

• Ventilate. Open a window while cleaning and for a while after. It does more for indoor air than switching brands.
• Wipe with a cloth, not a spray, at kid height. Aerosol droplets are the part that gets inhaled. Spray onto the cloth instead of the surface.
• Store everything above reach, in the original bottle. Decanting cleaning products into drink bottles is behind a genuinely alarming share of poisoning calls. Keep the Poisons Information Centre number - 13 11 26 - on the fridge.