Love your broom.

It is a simple enough request: love your broom. It has served you well. It has lifted dust from places you'd otherwise have had to clean with your hands—ugh. It has – well, I don't know – everyone's relationship with their broom is different. But surely your broom has done great things in your life, even if you are not a witch.

There is little that pains me more than to see a big crate full of brooms, jammed on top of and next to each other, bristles sticking out every which way. That's not love! That's certain death to your faithful cleaning implements!

I get frustrated that, where I work, when we get a new broom, it lasts for about 2 weeks before it's ragged and nigh unusable. If you've ever wondered why your brooms always end up lopsided and curved, why the bristles stick out to the sides like whiskers – and why they end up this way so quickly – it could be because you've been jamming it into places too small for it. But it probably has more to do with your storage style.

When you sit down, you don't sit on your fingers! So why rest your broom on the delicate appendages that it needs to do its work? Don't store your broom on its bristles on the floor! Get a wall bracket and hang it up! If your workplace *ahem* is too cheap or complacent to make the effort to purchase a wall bracket, don't try to stuff 5 or 6 broom heads into a crate along with the dustpans, shovel, and whatever other cleaning implements are being stored there—just turn your brooms upside-down! You'll find they fit into their storage space much easier, and they live a lot longer!

This has been a cleaning tip by Valerie.