Shopping for Brooms

When your floors are littered with dirt, wood shavings or spilled cereal, having a well-designed broom and dustpan at the ready can make the cleanup a lot easier.

“When you’re doing work, it’s more pleasurable to use something that’s properly designed,” said Taylor Levy, who, with her husband, Che-Wei Wang, runs CW&T, a Brooklyn design studio that won the National Design Award for product design from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum this month. “Details matter, because tiny frustrations and tiny pleasures add up.”

Functionality is important, of course, but so are aesthetics. Why? Because you’ll be more inclined to leave a good-looking broom out in the open rather than burying it at the back of a closet.

“If you can keep it out, you’ll use it — and if you can’t, you’re not going to use it as much,” Ms. Levy said. “And a broom is something you’ll actually want to use all the time.”

Broomcorn whisk with wood and galvanized-metal dustpan

$50 at American Broom Shop: americanbroomshop.com

Natural, black or black-tipped broom with oak handle

$75 at Lostine: 215-825-7270 or lostine.com

Broom with colored cord handle

$24 at Darling Spring: 917-456-5437 or darlingspring.com


Beech and horsehair broom with dustpan from Iris Hantverk

$120 at Goodee: 888-223-1783 or goodeeworld.com

Broom and dustpan from Bürstenhaus Redecker with embedded magnet for storage

$98 at Jayson Home: 800-472-1885 or jaysonhome.com


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source: nytimes.com