4 design hacks for a cleaner, tidier kitchen

Do you ever feel frustrated by the amount of time it takes to clean up your kitchen? Does your kitchen sometimes resemble the aftermath of an ibis picnic in your local park’s rubbish bins? If so, it’s time to consider implementing some creative kitchen design hacks that will save you cleaning time and make your daily meals less labour intensive. Try these four ideas to help you achieve a cleaner, tidier kitchen that’s less work to maintain.

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1. Upgrade your sink.

Want your sink to look as clean and tidy as the kitchen sinks online and in home décor magazines? Here’s the secret: A sleek, seamless undermount sink model is the ticket to avoiding hours of cleaning each month.

If your kitchen sink has a seam around it, you end up spending precious minutes every day de-gunking the mess that accumulates in it. Eliminate the seam to eliminate the mess and the resulting need to clean it. This will help keep your sink fresh, fragrant and fantastic. You’ll be all set to join the flock of proud peacocks posting picture-perfect kitchen selfies and breakfastgrams on social media sites.

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2. Rethink open shelving.

While open shelving has been a favourite kitchen design trend lately, it has its drawbacks. Everything you store on an open shelf is an easy target for dust, grime and grease splatters. If you install traditional kitchen cabinetry instead of open shelving, you can save yourself the grief of having to dust off shelved items every time you want to use them.

If you adore the look of open shelving so much that you can’t bring yourself to abandon the concept, there’s a compromise you should know about. Scot Meacham Wood at House Beautiful suggests simply adding glass doors onto your cabinets. That way, you’ll be able to see each item on the shelf as you would with open shelving, without the dust factor. You’ll also be able to easily clean the glass doors with a cloth, glass cleaner and a squeegee every once in a while instead of having to painstakingly dust and wash every last item on the shelf when needed.

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Bob Vila has a smart hack for people who want to try out open shelving before committing to it. He recommends removing your existing cabinet doors to see whether you’re able to stay organised enough to pull off the look successfully. If you end up with too much of a mess, it’s far easier to reattach the cabinet doors than it is to revert from a complete shelving remodel. Vila also suggests adding a range hood to minimise the amount of grease that ends up on your shelved items.

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3. Speed up scrubbing.

If there’s an area in your kitchen you can count on to get grubby faster than you can clean it, it’s the splashback. To make for the quickest possible cleanup in this hardworking area, you’ll want to choose a surface that can stand up to strong abrasion applied with a liberal amount of elbow grease. Rochelle at Bon Appetit suggests skipping painted or wallpapered splashbacks. Instead, she advises homeowners to choose a stainless steel or tile splashback, either of which can be aggressively scrubbed without any fear of damage. Keep in mind larger profile tiles are easier to clean and have less grout where grit can get trapped when selecting tiles for your new splashback.

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4. Invest in organisation.

Pull-out shelving can not only make it easier to access your pantry items; it can also make your kitchen cleaning and organisation process faster. With pull-out shelves in place, it takes mere seconds to find items and put things away after you’ve used them. Perhaps you can also dispense with the step stool you used to need for reaching those hard-to-access areas in the pantry, eliminating another item that can clutter up your kitchen.

Image: Kitchensource.com

You can speed up your cleaning times significantly if you implement any or all four of these ideas. We hope you’ll enjoy a cleaner, tidier kitchen environment if you put these ideas into practice in your own home.

For more advice and ideas for your kitchen reno check out these practical kitchen must-haves and lessons from a rookie kitchen renovator.