Home Remodeling Ideas to Make Cleaning Easier
Who doesn’t want a low-maintenance home today? Gone are the days when all people did was wiping, mopping, washing, and fixing things around the house for days, only to enjoy the results for a few precious minutes now and then. The change in modern lifestyle made us face a decision: either we live in a home, or we live for it. If you prefer to enjoy everything your home can give you every day, you need to implement a few home remodeling ideas to make cleaning easier and faster. Don’t get discouraged; the following house remodeling projects are simple enough and will not break the bank.
A few quick home remodeling ideas
Not every remodeling solution that helps you clean easily has to be costly or require a complete home makeover. The following tips prove it.
- Switch blinds for curtains. Quality synthetic curtains are easy to wash and dry without creases.
- Designate a pet feeding area. If you have a pet, place their feeding bowl in a less-frequented area of the kitchen, close to where you store their food.
- Create collection points for dirty laundry. Those who keep their washing machines in the basement will benefit from laundry baskets put in strategic places upstairs. If you put the bins where residents usually undress and collect from those points once a week, you’ll make your home tidier and save everybody’s time.
If you have small children or pets, implementing at least a few of the abovementioned home remodeling ideas will make your daily life more manageable and a lot less stressful.
Downsizing a home doesn’t always involve moving
Downsizing virtually means using less space than you already have, and using less implies cleaning less. To achieve this, you can rent out a part of the house (and make cleaning someone else’s job) or turn it into a storage area. Converting your attic, basement, or garage into living space are some of the home remodeling ideas that relieve you of a lot of cleaning work and become a source of additional income at the same time.
Sometimes, it is enough to calculate how much space you do use and simply reutilize the rest. Even some of the most frequented rooms have blind spots. This becomes obvious during bathroom renovation when you realize how much space you can use on the walls. Hanging cabinets are not reserved only for the kitchen. You can use the areas behind or above doors, nooks, and corners for shelves and cabinetry, keeping away items that would otherwise clutter your bathroom. When your space is clear, you can easily make it clean.
Consider removing your bathtub and installing a walk-in shower with frameless glass doors. You can make cleaning even more effortless by installing laminated glass doors that include a water-resistant layer. As a more affordable but less durable option, you can spray your new glass shower doors with a water-repellant. It will make them look new for longer if you frequently apply the spray.
Fewer furniture and less clutter equal a cleaner home
You have undoubtedly noticed by now that cleaning is faster and incredibly more efficient if you remove the excess. It involves disposing of the furniture that only gathers dust or eliminating the clutter we all inevitably accumulate over time. Sit down and sketch a plan for your home remodeling. Imagine an ideal living space using the favorite furniture and put it on paper. Put away everything else.
If you plan to keep this surplus furniture for a moment in the future, you can rent a nearby storage unit. Also, if you’d rather permanently dispose of some pieces of furniture, you can gift them to family or friends or donate them to your preferred charity. Local moving experts can handle the transport in all these situations as, most likely, you don’t have the strength, skill, or vehicle spacious enough to load it and transport it safely.
In the end, you should have quite enough comfortable and practical pieces of furniture. And don’t forget to make them easy to clean, too. Think about updating the upholstery of your sofas and chairs (or covering them) with easy-to-clean synthetic materials instead.
Kitchen: #1 Cleaning Challenge
Out of all rooms and areas in a house, the bathroom and kitchen come out as the most challenging to keep clean daily. They are most frequently used and a real magnet for spills and stains. This is why kitchen remodeling often becomes a lifesaver, especially for families with children. Among many home remodeling ideas, the ones that make your kitchen easy to clean include making your floors, walls, cabinetry, and countertops easy to maintain.
More durable doesn’t always imply it is easier to maintain. When you choose material for your floors, cabinets, and tops, go for the one that is strong and non-porous. Some materials are heat-sensitive; others require special chemicals. For a truly affordable and low-maintenance kitchen, choose ceramic tiles or vinyl for the floors, tempered glass for the backsplash, and quartz for the countertops. Keep your cabinets simple if you wish to avoid dusting and wiping the ornate decorations and handles; simple flat surfaces with a push-to-open mechanism will make your kitchen both easy to clean and attractive.
Also, don’t forget about the appliances that can help you keep your kitchen clean and tidy with ease. If your family’s growth made your old little dishwasher insufficient, replace it with a larger model. If you’re cooking more often, invest in a more powerful range hood. A bigger energy-efficient dishwasher helps you get rid of clutter and dirty dishes faster using roughly the same amount of water and electricity, and better ventilation reduces the buildup of grease and sticky dirt on your cabinets.
That final touch
Even the walls get dirty in a busy home. Choosing the right kind of color is becoming more important than choosing the right shade. It means coating the walls in paints that help you clean them should the necessity arise. In this sense, you might need to choose between washable and scrubbable paints. While more resistant to regular brushing than washable paints, scrubbable wall coating doesn’t have to be stain-resistant as well. Only stain-resistant paint will make your walls easy to clean, so make sure to choose the right type for each room separately. Which one you will need depends mainly on the activity to which you’re exposing your walls.