A cluttered space is not easy to clean – and sometimes it’s near impossible.

In Feng Shui, decluttering ranks first among equals alongside its partner cleaning. Both are required in Feng Shui to balance, energize and harmonize our lives. Unfortunately, few of us enjoy doing maintenance. The never-ending question becomes: how can we get through these chores faster and easier? 

Short of hiring a housekeeper (or for some of us, a bulldozer), we can take tips from the pros! So let’s decide to minimize our time with pail, mop, vacuum and broom and learn some design tricks to minimize clean time. 

Guest contributor

I’d like to introduce Greg Wiszniewski, a master cleaning pro. He and his wife founded Busybee Cleaning Services (NY) in 2004. And he’s written some good articles on how to clean smart. Below is just one of them. 

In this article, Greg demonstrates how arranging furniture and being smart about surfaces can help you keep your space sparkling with less effort. 

Minimize your clean time with these design tricks

By Greg Wiszniewski

Harmonizing your environment is the philosophy behind feng shui, and whether you’re a cynic or a true believer, there’s something to be said about achieving balance in your life. I’m no feng shui expert, but I do know a thing or two about set-ups, and I bet you’ve never thought about how arranging your furniture can affect your ability to keep your house clean. Intrigued? I hope so, because nothing is more rewarding than finishing your chores and looking over your sparkling environment. If you find you are putting cleaning off because it takes too much time, however, you likely don’t have a balanced environment. Let’s talk about feng shui (when it comes to cleaning, that is) and how you can maximize your space while reducing your cleaning time.

Arranging your furniture

Perhaps one of the most important things about making your housecleaning easier is how you arrange your furniture. Sure, it might look cool to have an eclectic set up with a ton of pieces scattered oddly about in your space, but an unorganized space is impossible to clean. Like feng shui, simplicity is crucial when arranging your furniture to create an easy cleaning space, and you should keep a few things in mind.

Placing your furniture up against walls not only maximizes your space and makes smaller rooms look larger, but it also makes keeping the area clean easier. It’s much quicker to vacuum a large, square space than to attempt to vacuum between (and under) numerous pieces of furniture scattered about. Another benefit is not having empty space behind your furniture to collect dust, leaving you with the necessity of squeezing between the sofa and wall to clean the area.

Using larger pieces of furniture also helps. First, it’s much easier to arrange less furniture in a uniform and easy-to-clean manner than a ton of smaller pieces. Second, larger pieces, such as your sofa and bed, look natural pushed up against the wall. Included in this mix is a larger, rather than smaller coffee table. What is easier to dust? A large coffee table placed in front of your couch or several smaller tables scattered throughout your living space. You see where I’m going with this.

Worried about moving larger furniture when it’s time to clean underneath? No need. Furniture casters come in all shapes and sizes and make rolling your items out of the way while cleaning a piece of cake.

Easy-to-clean surfaces

Soft surfaces

The size and arrangement of your furniture is only half the battle. Some surfaces are simply easier to keep clean than others, that’s the bottom line. While that suede couch might look elegant in your new living room, your Labrador’s fur sticking to it is going to quickly become a huge frustration. So, what surfaces are better for quick and easy cleaning than others are? Consider this.

Do you have pets? If you do than you might already know that carpeting just works better with pets than hardwood floors for the simple reason that the fur sticks to carpet rather than floats around. Vacuuming a carpet cleans it quickly and easily, and acrylic and polyester fibers are generally the easiest to keep clean. Having your carpet treated with a stain guard also makes cleaning up unexpected messes a breeze.

Hard surfaces

You probably don’t want carpeting in your kitchen or bathrooms, however, so let’s talk tile surfaces. Sure, it’s nice to have the old-fashioned tile pieces spaced perfectly and held securely with grout… but what about that grout? When thinking easy-to-clean flooring surfaces (and countertops), think seamless, because nothing gets dirty quicker than tile grout. For your floors, stained and sealed concrete, linoleum, or sheet vinyl is the way to go. These surfaces sweep and mop easily and do not have hard-to-clean seams.

For your countertops, think granite, stainless steel, quartz, or laminate. Again, no seams, easy to clean with the appropriate cleaners, and if you set your sink low into them, you can just sponge spills and messes directly into your sink. It really doesn’t get much easier than that.

Cleaning is a chore, but it doesn’t have to be a huge burden. If you arrange your furniture with a sense that larger empty spaces are easier to keep clean, use casters to easily move the pieces once it’s time to clean underneath them, and select materials that are low-maintenance, you’ll find the perfect harmony between keeping your house clean and enjoying quality downtime. Sounds like the perfect feng shui to me.

I hope you enjoyed Greg’s article and got some useful insights for keeping your place sparkling. Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any feedback or questions. It’s always great to hear your thoughts.