Things to Consider When Remodeling, in Regards to Cleaning
If you’re planning to build or remodel, or if you’re in the market for a new home, read ahead. Something to consider: the types of materials used in homebuilding, to more easily maintain a clean home.
This can get overlooked for the sake of vanity, cost efficiency, or misinformation regarding the care of certain types of surfaces. It’s important to consider these aspects so that you can go into the home building process with a perspective that considers long term maintenance, well after the build is over.
Make informed decisions when choosing materials for your build: I’ve curated a “this-not-that” guide, that goes over what surfaces are more challenging keep clean…and what to use instead.
Shower Tile
Hard to Maintain: Tiny Tile
Any surface where soap scum occurs, requires a good scrubbing. It’s time investment to scrub the shower in the first place. Tiny tile, however, requires a TON of maintenance and takes even more time — every grout line requires detailing with a brush and shower cleaner.
Instead, Use This: Large Tile
Less grout = less maintenance. Opt for a larger sized tile, which ultimately gives you less grout lines to work with.
Further Maintenance Tips
If you’re working with tiny tile in your home OR if you want to reduce the grout scrubbing time in your shower, opt for a motorized scrub brush. This will do the work for you, instead of putting in the elbow grease (resulting in potential shoulder pain) to maintain a clean shower.
Dark Colored Bathroom Hues
Hard to Maintain: Dark Colored Hues in the Shower
If you live in an area with a high mineral content in the water, you might notice hard water stains.
Hard water stains occur when minerals from tap water dry onto certain surfaces, such as the shower, sink, and toilet. Not only is mineral buildup difficult to remove, it’s also much more prominent on darker colored surfaces such as black or dark green tile, stone, and colored porcelain.
If the surface is properly sealed on a regular basis, it might be easier to clean this off. This will appear in the form of a white filmy layer that looks like soap scum, but is extremely difficult to scrub away.
Instead, Use This: Light Colored Hues
Residual mineral buildup is simply less noticeable on lighter colored hues. Opt for white porcelain, white acrylic, or light colored stone for the shower, sink, and toilet.
Further Maintenance Tips
If you DO have mineral buildup in the areas of your home where there’s running water, try using a high heat steamer to help break down and remove mineral buildup from surfaces. Additionally, check out our article on how to remove hard water stains.
Shower Doors
Hard to Maintain: Glass Shower Doors
Whether it be soap scum buildup, mineral buildup, or just water and soap splatters — it’s really challenging to make a glass shower door look good…other than right after it’s been cleaned. Even then, it can be challenging to remove mineral buildup if the glass shower door isn’t regularly sealed.
Instead, Use This: Open Shower, Less Glass, or a Shower Curtain
Make things easier to maintain and save some money. Opt for an open air design and/or a shower curtain. A cloth shower curtain liner can easily be thrown into the wash and doesn’t require scrubbing.
If you must have a glass shower door, opt for a 50/50 design: utilize half of the length of the shower/tub with a swinging panel (to prevent water from spillage). The other half? Open space. It’s less surface area to clean.
Further Maintenance Tips
When cleaning a glass shower door, invest in an Ettore Backflip Squeegee. It’s a game changer for glass cleaning. This scrubber/squeegee duo neatly nests together and the squeegee blade can ‘backflip’ or turn 180 degrees, making the scrubbing and squeegee action happen all in one swift move.
To clean glass: spray glass cleaner on the surface, scrub, squeegee, and dry with a super dry terry cloth towel.
Appliances
Hard to Maintain: Stainless Steel Appliances
Stainless steel appliances can be challenging to keep shiny as noted in this article. Fingerprints, dust, dirt, grease stains, and even rust can occur depending on the quality of the stainless steel.
Instead, Use This: Lacquer Painted Appliances
Lacquer painted appliances can also show fingerprints and buildup, but it’s less prominent. There’s also one less step in cleaning these appliances, making them more efficient to clean.
Further Maintenance Tips
If you DO choose stainless steel appliances for your home, spray and wipe clean with an all purpose spray and polish with mineral oil. Use a fresh, clean, super dry terry cloth towel to apply mineral oil.
Stovetops
Hard to Maintain: Grates or Coils
General rule of the thumb: the more corners and crevices, the more to clean. Gas stovetop grates can accumulate oily buildup in its corners and crevices, making them harder to clean. Not impossible to clean — just time consuming.
Gas stovetops are a preferred choice for a good reason, however. A gas stovetop evenly heats up a pan, for optimum cooking. I’ll go into some cleaning solutions for this type of stove below. But first, let’s talk about an alternative option…
Instead, Use This: Glass Stove Top
If you DO prefer an electric stove, a glass stove top is the best option, for easy maintenance. This is one flat surface to scrub and polish.
Further Maintenance Tips
If you DO opt for a gas stove, here’s a few solutions that can make things a little easier to clean:
(1) Most stovetop grates can fit inside of any dishwasher. The high heat of a dishwasher cycle will remove any greasy buildup, making this cleaning task nearly hands free.
(2) These removable stovetop mats can keep food spills off of the stovetop itself. When it’s time to clean, just lift the cover off of the stove and wash it in the sink. This sure beats scrubbing the stovetop by hand.
Countertops
Hard to Maintain: Tile, Marble, and Dark Colored Granite
Tile countertops are something that lived and died in the 80/90’s, but they DO still exist today. Similar to tile in showers, this type of counter can require more maintenance than one flat surface. Food particles tend to get stuck in the grout, making this type of countertop the least favorable to clean.
Marble countertops are extremely fragile and cannot come in contact with any fluid containing a high or low PH (only neutral PH). Coffee, juice, milk, and certain cleaning products will stain this countertop, as we go over in this article.
Dark colored granite can look streaky and can take a little longer to polish clean.
Instead, Use This: Stone, Wood, Light Colored Granite
Stone and wood countertops are ridiculously easy to clean. They don’t require polishing and show minimal streaks.
Further Maintenance Tips
The BEST countertop cleaner for everyday use: The Tidy People All Purpose Spray. This all purpose cleaner comes in the scent Lemon Rose Rocket 🍋 ✨🌹⚡️🚀
