Fellow Neat Freaks: This Broom Will Change the Way You Clean Your Kitchen

This is Highly Recommend, a column dedicated to what people in the food industry are obsessed with eating, drinking, and buying right now.

If someone said to me, “Tell me you’re in your 30’s without telling me you’re in your 30’s,” I would send them a link to this piece, wherein I earnestly declare my love for a “broom system” without a lick of irony. I am both lazy and obsessive about cleaning. I have a big, throaty Dyson vacuum and a quietly buzzing Roomba—but it’s Muji’s small, skinny broom I reach for multiple times a day. It has transformed my cleaning life, and I want that for you too.

Given the Muji-head that I am (their pens, notebooks, and storage boxes are the only ones worth having), I’m frankly shocked I didn’t arrive at this find years earlier. Muji’s approach to cleaning is modular; the broom consists of a handle and a removable head. There are different material options for the handle ranging from blonde wood to stark white plastic, but the secret is to stick with the aluminum version because it’s the only one that telescopes, impressively increasing and decreasing in height with a twist of your wrist so you don’t have to bend over like a gnome. (Your back thanks me for this intel.) Raise it to its maximum length and you can reach even the furthest, long forgotten corner of your ceiling.

The real magic lies in the removable brush head that click-clacks satisfyingly onto the pole. The stiff but still flexible brush picks up every last bit of debris off the floor. Those scraps of onion skin, the shower of rice grains, and that lone chocolate chip don’t stand a chance against this magic agent. The closely spaced bristles also do a bang-up job of grabbing hair (of pets and the humans who shed as much as pets) and that powdery, fluffy, dust that haunts your floors like linty ghosts. The brush head swivels swiftly on its side, thanks to a hinged knuckle where it attaches to the pole, helping it get into the narrowest spaces between stove and cabinet, beneath the couch, or the uncharted territory under your fridge. Being able to flip the head also means you can keep the bristles up and off the floor when you store the broom, relieving them of excess pressure. TL; DR: your broom will live a long life.

While it isn’t explicitly meant for outdoor use, I’ve brushed a mountain of dry, fallen leaves off my balcony, and the Muji broom handled it like a champ. In fact, it’s held up remarkably well after almost 2 years of daily use. The bristles still look like new, and they show no sign of falling out or getting grungy anytime soon. When that day does come, I know replacing it will be as easy as slipping on a new brush head. The entire cleaning system is remarkably well designed and full of interchangeable heads for various tasks. My mom swears by the squeegee attachment for her bathroom tiles and giant patio doors. (I’d warn you away from the dust pan that clips to the pole though. Theoretically great, but in practice, it’s a fail—something about the edge of the dustpan prevents it from picking up the last of the dust effectively.)

Is your pulse racing? Did you already add the handle, brush attachment, and mop head with microfiber cloth to your cart? You too must be in your 30’s. Welcome.