5 ways to create an easy to clean home

Home & Garden Articles

Everybody wants a beautiful home – but when you spend most of your weekend cleaning your home in order to maintain its appearance, you might wonder whether having a home filled with beautiful designs and objects is really worth it after all. But actually, the amount of time you spend cleaning within your home is affected significantly by the design decisions that you make when you plan and furnish the space. Here are 5 ways to design a home that is easy to clean.

Switch out curtains for blinds. Curtains made from heavy fabrics are notoriously difficult to clean. The image of people vacuuming at their thick curtains and accidentally pulling them down is not uncommon. And then there is the cost of having to take curtains to the dry cleaners every six months or so (with which comes the hassle of taking them down and re-hanging them again). And this is a good reason why people are opting for blinds in the home instead. Instead of swathes of fabric that easily harbour germs, with blinds you can wipe the plastic, aluminium or wooden slats clean with a damp cloth. It takes seconds to ensure you have a clean home when you choose blinds over curtains.

Opt for a concrete floor. When you want a really clean house, you absolutely have to pay attention to the floor because this is where dirt will get trodden in from shoes and from the paws of pets. An easy to mop floor that requires no scrubbing is the best possible solution, and so installing a concrete floor can be a great idea. Many people only think of concrete as an outdoor material but there is no reason why it can't be used on interior floors as well. Once it has been sealed, it will totally resist any moisture, making it easy to clean with a simple mop and soap water solution. You can even stain concrete so that it fits in with the colour scheme of your décor.

Furnish with leather. If you want to minimise the number of fabrics in your home for easy cleaning but you want to avoid a cold environment full of stone, brick and marble, then think about adding some touches of leather in the home. Leather sofas and leather cushions are great statement pieces that add an element of softness to a living space and yet they are easy to wipe down with a damp cloth. Avoid white leather because pasta sauce and red wine stains could be difficult to remove, and opt for tan and charcoal colours instead.

Welcome mats are your friend. Because a lot of dirt can get trodden into the house via shoes and pets' paws, it is a great idea to purchase welcome mats for both the exterior and interior of your front door. These are a relatively inexpensive investment but they will keep so much dirt out of your house, making your weekend cleaning ritual far less taxing. You should also think about purchasing a shoe rack, and place it right by the entrance to your home so that people instinctively realise that shoes are not welcome past the front door.

Built in storage. If you integrate storage into the things you already have, this will benefit you in two ways – first of all, you will have fewer extra storage items that you have to dust and polish, and secondly, you will have useful storage solutions so that your house becomes less cluttered. Think about using drawers under beds, opening up the tops of tables to create new storage solutions and even converting the space underneath each stair in your stairway into a sliding drawer.

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17 February 2015

Home Truths: Decorating Through The Years

I am the proud mother of nine grown up children! There wasn't much money around when they were little, so I was always sewing, knitting, growing vegetables and generally being self-sufficient. Now that they have their own households, you would think that I could rest a little, but I am busier than ever. I am blessed that my children and their partners are talented and have good jobs. However, they are very busy, so most of their home decorating is left up to me. From making curtains to painting bathrooms, I always have at least one project on the go. To tell the truth, I really enjoy it and it makes me feel that all my skills gained over the years are useful. I thought that people might like to read this blog which shares a lot of tips and ideas. I really hope you enjoy scanning through these pages.