The Easy-to-Clean Kitchen

Layout and Appliances

A good work triangle—meaning the arrangement of the cooktop, sink, and refrigerator—minimizes the distance you have to carry things in the kitchen. It's the carrying that often leads to spills and messy pile-ups. Michelle Belden, a residential architect in Palo Alto, Calif., calls the area between workstations "drip space," so she puts the cooktop and sink close together to minimize messes. A center island can often compensate for a poor work triangle. If your kitchen is too small for a permanent island, a rolling cart or table can serve the same purpose, says Los Angeles kitchen designer Donald Silvers.

Thanks to gravity, most kitchen dirt ends up on the floor. Nothing will save you from having to clean it regularly, but the fewer the seams or gaps in your floor, the fewer the places for dirt to collect. "The dirtiest place in any kitchen is the seam between the vertical surface of the toe-kick and the horizontal surface of the floor," says Seattle-based kitchen designer Richard Landon. He likes to eliminate the seam by "rolling" the edge of the floor up to the toe-kick, replacing the right-angle joint with a smooth curve. The technique is easiest with vinyl, linoleum, and tile, he says, but it's also possible with wood if you have the edge pieces custom-milled.

Landon favors ceramic tile flooring but says its clean look takes constant attention. "You obligate yourself to a daily sweeping of the floor," he says. To make tile look cleaner, Silvers recommends large squares with narrow grout lines.

Self-cleaning ovens, frost-free freezers, refrigerators with spill-catching shelves, and dishwashers with a range of cycles all help cut down on kitchen cleanup chores. If you've ever had to clean dirty drip pans from a stove top with conventional burners, you'll appreciate cooktops with smooth, ceramic surfaces. Even sealed gas burners with grates over the top are a cinch to clean.

Grease and smoke from cooking are common culprits in dirty kitchens, but a properly sized and installed exhaust fan can help reduce greasy buildup on surfaces.

Built-in appliances eliminate common dirt traps, such as the space behind the refrigerator or the gaps between a freestanding range and the adjacent countertops.

Cabinets and Countertops

Cabinets that have flat doors with a baked-on finish are easiest to clean. Michelle Belden, a residential architect in Palo Alto, Calif., likes painted cabinets with a high-gloss finish. "They show dirt, but they're easier to wipe down," she says. Stained cabinets with a flatter, or no-gloss, finish don't show dirt as much, she says, but they're more easily marred and harder to touch up.

Los Angeles kitchen designer Donald Silvers says raised-panel doors and elaborate molding around cabinetry may look nice, but they are harder to clean. "The greater the molding, the greater the impact on maintenance," he says. Drawers with removable acrylic utensil liners are an option recommended by Pittsburgh designer Tom Trzcinski because, he notes, "the liners can be thrown right into the dishwasher."

Unlike doors and drawers you have to reach a hand under to open, pulls and handles keep the mess off the cabinetry surface when your fingers are food-covered or greasy. Look for hardware that makes it easy to open doors and drawers, or you'll swap cleaning doors for cleaning handles. Belden says 3-inch-long metal pulls work nicely. "They let you open the door or drawer with one finger," she says.

Generally, the smoother the surface of your countertop and the fewer the seams, nooks, or crannies, the better. Curving your countertop up the wall creates a seamless backsplash that eliminates the dirt-catching right-angle joint where the counter meets the wall. In front, "make sure the countertop edge overhangs cabinet doors or drawers somewhat," Belden says. Otherwise, spills may get onto cabinets or seep into drawers.

How your sink is attached to the countertop affects ease of cleaning. Undermount sinks, attached to the underside of the countertop, make it easy to wipe messes from the counter right into the sink. Self-rimming sinks, on the other hand, have a perimeter lip that's sealed with a bead of caulk and can be a dirt collector. Perhaps the best solution is an integral sink, in which the bowl and surrounding counter are one large piece of the same material, typically solid-surfacing or stainless steel. The lack of seams between the sink and countertop means there's nowhere for dirt to collect.

If an integral sink is too expensive, there's a cheaper solution. "Go out and buy a cutting board," Silvers says. "Put the board over the countertop, then slide cuttings right into the sink."

The area behind the sink can be a trouble spot, too. Most sink-counter configurations leave about a 1-inch gap between the back edge of the sink and the backsplash. It's a space just wide enough to attract "gross and gruesome" dirt, Landon says, but it's too narrow to clean easily. He solves the problem by making the sink countertop 1-1/2 inches deeper. The extra depth is made possible with 2-by-4s placed between standard 24-inch-deep base cabinets and the wall. With the counter at 25-1/2 inches deep, there's just enough additional space behind the sink that it can be easily wiped with a sponge or rag.

Handy receptacles for kitchen trash make cleanup easier. Food scraps can go down the disposal, but you need a hidden place for food packaging, as well. If you live in a community with a recycling program, use different containers to sort paper, plastic, cardboard, and glass from nonrecyclable items. Sort as you work in the kitchen, and you'll save a step on trash day.

In addition to your trash, put away your treasures. Open shelves provide flexible storage, but they gather dust easily. Full or partial glass doors or display cases can block out much of the dust without blocking views of what's inside. But keep in mind that this creates a different chore: You will have to clean the glass.