Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House Author: Cheryl Mendelson | Language: English | ISBN:
B001D1SRXW | Format: EPUB
Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House Description
Home Comforts is something new. For the first time in nearly a century, a sole author has written a comprehensive book about housekeeping. This is not a dry how-to manual, nor a collection of odd tips and hints, a cleaning book, a history book, or an arid encyclopedia compiled by a committee or an institute.
Home Comforts is a readable explanation for both beginners and experts of all the domestic arts -- choosing fabrics, keeping the piano in tune, caring for books, making a good fire in the fireplace and avoiding chimney fires, ironing and folding, setting up a good reading light, keeping surfaces free of food pathogens, and everything else that modern people might want to do for themselves in their homes. But this reliable and thorough book on the practicalities of housekeeping is also an argument for the importance of private life and the comforts offered by housekeeping.
Cheryl Mendelson is a philosopher, lawyer, sometime professor, and a homemaker, wife, and mother.
Home Comforts is based on her domestic education, which she acquired while growing up on a farm in the hills of Greene County, in southwestern Pennsylvania, from her grandmothers, aunts, and mother. Learning from the distinct domestic styles of her native Appalachian relatives and her Italian immigrant relatives, she appreciated early on how important domestic customs are to a sense of comfort and identity in life. She writes out of love and respect for her subject, and hopes to inspire others to develop the affection and respect for home life and housework she was fortunate to have learned.
Mendelson addresses the meanings as well as the methods of housekeeping with a keen sense of the history and values involved. The result is a warm, good-humored, engagingly written book with a message and a point of view, one that is overflowing with useful reflections and information. The clarity, breadth, and depth of the information collected here are unparalleled. You can read
Home Comforts for thoughtful entertainment or use its ample index to help you find the answers to practical domestic questions. There is nothing quite like it.
Among this book's unique features:· A skeptical discussion of the excessive use of disinfectants in the home. · How to iron a dress shirt and how to fold sheets. · How to make up a bed with hospital corners. · How to do all basic sewing stitches. · How to choose proper sizes for sheets, tablecloths, and other household linens. · How to set the table for informal and formal meals. · Expert recommendations for safe food storage. · The most exhaustive and reliable information on fabrics, textile fibers, and their laundering, drying, and other care that exists for nonprofessionals. · A thorough explanation of care labels and why and how you should often (carefully) disregard them. · Housekeeping guidelines for people with pets or with allergies. · What to do about dust mites. · How to clean and care for wood, china and crystal, jewelry, ceramic tile, metals, and more. · Guides to stain and spot removal. · Extensive recommendations for improving home safety. · A summary of laws applicable to the home, including privacy, accident liability, contracts, and domestic employees.·
· 200 Elegant, Clear Drawings ·- File Size: 5424 KB
- Print Length: 906 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 068481465X
- Publisher: Scribner; Reprint edition (November 4, 1999)
- Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
- Language: English
- ASIN: B001D1SRXW
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #19,614 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > How-to & Home Improvements > Home Repair - #9
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > How-to & Home Improvements > Cleaning, Caretaking & Relocating - #9
in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Home Improvement & Design > How-to & Home Improvements > Home Repair
- #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > How-to & Home Improvements > Home Repair - #9
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > How-to & Home Improvements > Cleaning, Caretaking & Relocating - #9
in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Home Improvement & Design > How-to & Home Improvements > Home Repair
I bought this book without knowing anything about it. As a thirtysomething single man who just bought his first house, I've been looking for the practical information that I never got growing up (more my fault than mom's), and after idly flipping through this book in the store, I was convinced that I'd found it. The amount of venom contained in many of the reviews here was frankly astonishing to me, and for a moment I wondered if I'd wandered onto the wrong page by mistake.
Home Comforts is not "the fascists guide to spotless houses at the expense of friends, family, career, and joy". Indeed, the author repeatedly stresses that her methods and schedules are suggestions, nothing more, and goes to great lengths to explain why each task should be done in the first place, and how to balance the effort against the benefits. I found nothing in it to suggest that I, living alone in my brand-new house, should be forced into hours of weekly drudgery in order to meet an irrational white-glove standard; what I found was a set of clear explanations that would allow me to make informed choices on how to set my own standards and keep up with them in a reasonable and realistic way.
Attempting to read it from cover to cover in one sitting is indeed overwhelming, and I can see why it left some people feeling inadequate or with the false impression that the author was looking down her nose at the readers. I didn't know most of those things either, and much of what I thought I knew was wrong.
Some aspects that others find off-putting added to the charm for me. Who but a lawyer would, when faced with the complications of laundry care labels, reach immediately for the federal regulations governing them?
Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House Preview
Link
Please Wait...