The Future Of Housework

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

April 9, 1999 / 11:06 AM EDT / CBS

As part of CBS News' series on spring cleaning, Correspondent Hattie Kauffman went looking for the future, and found it in La Habra Heights, California, at a house that was designed to stay clean.

For as long as anyone can remember, we've been trying to cut down on elbow grease. When can we look forward to a future of automation and an end to household drudgery?

Well, for one family, the future is now. They've built a home that they say takes the work out of cleaning.

The Phillips have a household that bustles with five kids and their various friends. Yet, it is calmer these days than it was when all eight of their kids were under the same roof.

It has all the ingredients for a mess. But it's not, because the Phillips' house is custom designed for easy clean-ups.

The bathroom sink is automatic. That means no faucets to polish. Hands are air-dried, so there are no towels to wash.

The laundry does need to be done, so there are built-in chutes that pre-sort the clothes, which makes for fewer trips down the stairs and less time in the laundry room.

Sandra Phillips' quest for clean came with blueprints that detail how to make your house do the housework. Don Aslett has designed a lifestyle for the clean freak. He's got grand ideas about how a home should be built, right down to the tiniest detail.

Aslett has written more than a dozen books on his one consuming passion: cleaning. It's not just "how to," it's a philosophy. He says, "There's a lot of ways to clean faster in the modern world. You can get better tools, better technique, get rid of your junk, get help. The very best way, design it out. This is the cleaning of the future."

Sandra Phillips is a believer in Aslett's method. Her custom designed home uses his principles. Even the barroom-style chairs mean less maintenance. "If I were to have to move all these chairs and vacuum or sweep underneath, that's 24 legs you'd have to move," she says.

Did you ever clean the top of your kitchen cupboards? Sandra doesn't. "By bringing them, or extending them, all the way to the ceiling we avoid that huge dust problem," she notes.

It's not just good design. There's a spirit of cooperation. Everyone at the Phillips house pitches in. "We want what work we have to do to be as fast as possible, so we can get back together and enjoy the fun things," says Sandra.

The family has plenty of time for that.

When you see her curtain-less, door-less, easy-to-clean shower, or see her go into attack mode on her wall-mounted toilets, you wonder if Sandra takes it all too seriously. "People might look at us and say we're fanatics, but we are an extremely busy family," she says. "Organization helps you save time. It doesn't take us time to do these things. It saves us time."

Sandra has thought of everything, right down to the prisms on her chandelier, which were designed to attract less dust. What are he tips for spring cleaning? She doesn't have any. Her house stays in such great shape that all she does this time of year is tidy up a bit.