Home Muse recommends home and garden products for Australian households. This page says where the information on those pages comes from.
Where the facts come from
Specifications come from manufacturer documentation and from Australian retailer listings: capacity, dimensions, wattage, warranty length, what is in the box. Where a product carries a government rating, the number comes from that scheme rather than from marketing copy. Energy star ratings and annual kWh come from the Energy Rating label, and water stars and litres per cycle from WELS. Both are Australian government schemes, which is what makes those numbers comparable between brands.
What a product is like to live with comes from owner reviews at Australian retailers, read in quantity. A pattern of owners reporting the same fault is worth reporting. A single unhappy review is not. Where a product is new enough that few people have reviewed it, the page says so rather than filling the gap.
We do not run a test lab, and nothing here is described as tested unless someone has genuinely used it. Where a brand has supplied a product, the page carrying it says so.
How products get onto a list
The best products for a job belong on the page whether or not a retailer pays us for the click. Where something we rate has no affiliate program behind it, we link the shop people actually buy it from as an ordinary link.
Every recommendation carries a real drawback, taken from what owners complain about. "Best" is always best for something, whether that is a small laundry, a shared house or a budget.
Review counts tell you how much evidence exists about a product. They say nothing about whether it is good, and they are never a reason for one product to beat another.
Prices and links
Prices move week to week, so pages describe a price band rather than quote a figure that will be wrong by the time you read it.
Outbound links are opened and checked when a page is published or refreshed. The listing has to be the exact product, in stock, and shipping from Australia. Retailers still delist things without warning, and the corrections page covers what happens then.
How the site is paid for
When you buy through a link here, the retailer may pay us a percentage of the sale, at no extra cost to you. The earnings disclosure page sets out which programs are involved.
If something here is wrong
The corrections page explains how to tell us, and what happens next.