A couch potato may never feel quite as domestically insufficient as the day her occasional housekeeper leaves this message:
“If we ever do this again … can you pull-eease buy a new broom?”
Gulp.
Turns out quality is better than quantity when it comes to brooms. That steel-handled dinosaur used for years to brush snow off the front steps? It looks hardy enough. Ditto for its two plastic-handled, straw-bristled sidekicks. But when straw bristles become bent and scraggly, they can create more mess than they clean. And having more than one scraggly broom is just sad.
“Real Simple — Cleaning” ($21.95, Time Inc.) offers this advice for picking the perfect broom: “Bristles made of nylon catch dirt best, and an angled head can drag the dregs from corners. A lightweight handle eases the strain that sweeping places on shoulders. Look for a broom with a matching dustpan.”
The quest for a new broom started and ended with Casabella (casabella.com), a cleaning product company out of Blauvelt, N.Y., that turned sweeping into a fashion statement with cheetah and pink-giraffe-print brooms, along with Karim Rashid’s Onda Broom, a cool, curvaceous character that comes in a sensuous palette and includes a shapely attached dustpan.
One design nerd picked up an Onda at a museum gift shop and blogged this: “Perfect broom form in my hand.”
But while ogling this rock star of brooms on the rack, another Casabella offering beckoned like the perfect pumps at a half-price shoe sale. The Ergo Broom is designed to be ergonomically kind to the body. Its longer, curved handle eliminates the need to bend over while you sweep, and its detachable, angled head makes it like two tools in one.
One turn around the kitchen and it was clear the Ergo Broom lives up to it hype. So here’s to saving face with one straight-talking housekeeper.
The Ergo Broom is about $20 at Bed, Bath & Beyond, The Container Store and online at .
Elana Ashanti Jefferson: 303-954-1957 or ejefferson@ .
