If you’re getting ready to remodel your kitchen, how would you like to make decisions that not only make it look better now, but keep it looking better and easier to clean for months to come? Most people love this idea but wonder how they can do that while making simple decorating decisions. Well, the key is in the cooking selections you make.

Think about what you touch most often in your kitchen. Appliances aside, there’s not much more practical than the kitchen handle and knobs. You’re always pulling on a kitchen handle or knob when you need to reach into a drawer for cutlery or reach into pantry cabinets to get the ingredients for a great meal. Sometimes you even get into these cabinets and drawers when you are already preparing a meal, which means your hands are dirty, grimy and spreading that dirt and grime to the kitchen handle or knob.

While you may not change your dirty hands habits, you can change the way every handle and knob in the kitchen deals with your dirty hands. There are all kinds of materials that cabinet hardware is made from. Some of them deal with dirt and grime better than others. The more you know up front before you make a purchase, the better your chances of having cabinet hardware that looks great for a long time.

do your research

The first thing you need to do is really get to know the materials that go into the kitchen pull or cabinet knob you’re considering buying. You can find hardware made in anything from glass to wood, metal, plastic, stone, and porcelain. Everyone reacts differently to the environment around them.

For example, raw wood will soak up any liquid you might get on your hands. So unless the wood is painted or stained and sealed, it can end up taking on the color of that spaghetti sauce you had in your hand when you opened the cabinet.

Plastic, although many people think it is easy to clean, is also easy to stain. Think about what happens if you dump some old colored sauces into a plastic container in the fridge to store them. Once you eat the sauce it seems like the color never comes out of the plastic, right? Well, that can also be the impact on your kitchen pull.

Other materials have other problems. Metal can corrode if acid elements touch it. Porcelain can break with rapid changes in temperature and can also absorb some things that come into contact with it.

All materials have their pros and cons. The key is knowing what you’re buying and how often it’s in your kitchen. Know what you’ll be putting the hardware through before you make a selection. Also learn how to clean it and make sure you do it regularly. Often, if you clean the dirt or grime right away, it won’t have time to affect the hardware and you’ll be able to enjoy that hardware looking like new for much longer.