Is it Safe to Ask Children to Help with Domestic Cleaning?
One of the wonderful things about natural cleaners is that they are safe for children to use. Most of the ingredients used to make these homemade cleaning products don’t need warnings on the label to store out of reach of children and to use the product in an adequately ventilated area; neither does it need the number of the local poisons centre in case of swallowing. And this has another advantage: if the product is child-safe, you can encourage children to help with the cleaning with minimal risk to small systems (and young, delicate skin).
The same applies to most organic pest control methods for the garden.
Important!
However, it is important here to add that essential oils should always be kept out of the reach of children and that they should not be taken internally. While children can certainly use natural house cleaning products made with essential oils, any child under the age of eight should not be allowed to use the oils themselves (a responsible eight year old who understands that they shouldn’t eat the essential oil or use half a bottle at a time can have a go, however). And the usual first aid advice applies for anything other than water: if you get something in your eye, flush it out with cold running water.
Kids Can Help Make Cleaning Products
Some natural home products (and methods) can be made by children with a minimum of supervision.
Soap Snot
There’s no denying that the gel made by pouring boiling water (adult supervision required for under 10s) onto chopped or grated soap has a consistency like thick runny mucus – sorry! Once the gel has cooled, it can be used to wash floors; wash soft toys, woolly jerseys and delicate underpants (not that your children are likely to have delicate underpants); and to get aphids off the roses – put a mixture of the soap snot and water into a water pistol and sent out your young SAS squad to gun down the aphids lurking in the roses. Soap snot also has a slippery texture that is quite fun to handle. Soap snot can also be used as shampoo and as liquid soap. Make up an extra big batch for a “messy play day” or as an alternative to a food fight – the kids get to make a huge slithery, slimy mess that has a high gross-out factor but is very easy to clean up.
Vinegar spray
Mix equal parts of vinegar and water to make a glass cleaning spray and mould killer – and an after-shampoo rinse. Add a little essential oil, and the spray doubles as an air freshener for the toilet. You can also use diluted vinegar spray to help with general kitchen surface domestic cleaning Wandsworth wide (well if your house is based in Wandsworth SW18, that is :))
Baking soda paste
Combine baking soda and a little water to make a paste that’s suitable for cleaning down the fridge, inside the microwave and around the bath. You can also clean your teeth with it, but this tastes pretty awful! If the baking soda spray is applied quite thickly and left to dry, spray it with the vinegar spray to see it fizzing.
Take them alive
Send small children to hunt down snails and caterpillars infesting your vegetables. Put them in a container and either feed them to chickens, if you have them, or take them to the nearest park with a pond and feed them to the ducks. Ducks don’t just eat sandwich crusts! Small fingers can also remove aphids by hand, if the child in question has the patience.