Few people love spending their time cleaning their houses. If you’re building a new home or remodeling, certain design features you select could make it easier to keep your home clean.

Kitchen

• Select a hard-surface floor with as few seams as possible. Hard wood floors are a great option, but they can be vulnerable to spills. Stained concrete is an excellent choice. It can be easily cleaned by sweeping or mopping and virtually nothing can penetrate it to cause stains.
• Choose sleek, slab-front cabinets. Not only do they look modern and streamlined, but they are much easier to keep clean than cabinets with intricate moulding with lots of crevices to collect dirt and dust.
• An integrated or under-mount kitchen sink makes it easy to wipe messes from the counter right into the sink. There are no seams to collect gunk.
• Grout can be a chore to keep clean. Eliminate grout lines all together by replacing tile backsplash with stone slabs or full-sheet metal, or at least reduce the number of grout lines by using larger tiles.
• For the same reason, avoid using tile for countertops. Instead, go with large slabs of quartz, Corian, laminate, granite, or concrete.
• While many swear gas burners are the superior choice for cooking, glass cooktops are much easier to keep clean.
• Keep trash and recycling bins on a roll-out cabinet shelf. This will make them easy to access and keep them tucked neatly out of sight.

Bathroom

• As with the kitchen, fewer grout lines in the bathroom means less cleaning. Use large tiles for the floors and walls.
• A wall-mounted faucet will allow water to drain down into the sink rather than that collect around the base of the faucet, resulting is less gunk build-up.
• Wall-mounted toilets and sinks make it easier to clean all sides of the fixtures as well as mop under them.
• Replace an enclosed shower with a door-less shower. This will eliminate the need to clean glass doors or shower curtains.
• Instead of a center drain in your shower, place a long drain along the inside wall and slope the floor slightly so that water drains into it rather than pooling up on the shower floor.

Living Areas

• Hard-surface flooring, like hardwood floors, tile, or laminate are easier to keep clean than carpet. If you must have carpet, consider using carpet tiles. If there’s a spill, simply pull up that tile and clean it in the sink. If a tile becomes damaged, you can replace that single tile rather than having to replace all of the carpeting. Carpet tiles are perfect for kid’s rooms and play areas.
• A central vacuum makes it easy to keep your carpet clean without having to lug around a heavy vacuum.
• Locate your laundry room next to your bedrooms, on the same floor if possible, to make it less work to get the laundry to and from the washing machine, eliminating the need to carry heavy baskets of laundry up and down stairs. Another option is to install a laundry chute.
• When selecting paint for your walls, go with an eggshell finish. It is easy to wipe off or touch up if needed. Similarly, if you’re considering wall paper, go with a vinyl wall covering, which can be wiped off with a sponge.
• Incorporate built-in storage where ever possible throughout the house. Having a place for everything will help keep clutter from building up on surface areas.

With a little thoughtful planning, you can spend more time enjoying your home and less time cleaning it.