Synopses & Reviews
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 ·
Review
"The bible of good housekeeping."
-- People
Review
"An extraordinary achievement that has no peer in this century and may well have none in the next." -- Newsweek
Review
"
Home Comforts is to the house what
Joy of Cooking is to food."
-- USA Today
Review
"Mesmerizing -- and, in its own way, revolutionary." -- Chicago Sun-Times
Review
"There's only one book to own if you want to be serious about your housekeeping: Cheryl Mendelson's magesterial HOME COMFORTS."
Synopsis
The classic bestselling resource for every American household, Home Comforts addresses the meanings as well as the methods of housekeeping to help you manage everyday chores, find creative solutions to modern domestic dilemmas, and enhance the experience of life at home. Home Comforts is to the house what Joy of Cooking is to food. --USA TODAY
For the first time in nearly a century, here is an engaging and comprehensive book about housekeeping. Far from a dry how-to manual, nor a collection of odd tips and hints, a history book, or an encyclopedia compiled by a committee or an institute, Home Comforts is a readable guide for both beginners and experts of all the domestic arts. Including choosing fabrics, cleaning china, keeping the piano in tune, making a good fire, folding a fitted sheet, setting the dining room table, keeping surfaces free of germs, watering plants, removing stains--this guide covers everything that modern people might want to do for themselves in their homes.
Further topics include: making up a bed with hospital corners, expert recommendations for safe food storage, reading care labels (and sometimes carefully disregarding them), keeping your home free of dust mites and other allergens, home safety and security, this is a practical, good-humored, philosophical, even romantic, guidebook to the art and science of household management.
Synopsis
The classic bestselling resource for every American home. Choosing fabrics, cleaning china, keeping the piano in tune, making a good fire, folding a fitted sheet, setting the dining room table, keeping surfaces free of food pathogens, watering plants, removing stains --
Home Comforts addresses the meanings as well as the methods of hands -- on housekeeping to help you manage everyday chores, find creative solutions to modern domestic dilemmas, and enhance the experience of life at home.
Further topics include: Making up a bed with hospital corners, Expert recommendations for safe food storage, Reading care labels (and sometimes carefully disregarding them), Keeping your home free of dust mites and other allergens, Home safety and security, A summary of laws applicable to the home, including privacy, accident liability, contracts, and domestic employees and more in this practical, good-humored, historic, philosophical, even romantic, guidebook to the art of household management.
About the Author
Cheryl Mendelson is a Harvard Law School graduate, a sometime philosophy professor, a novelist (Morningside Heights and Love, Work, Children), and a homemaker by choice. Born into a rural family in Greene County, Pennsylvania, she now lives in New York City with her husband and son.
Table of Contents
ContentsPreface
BEGINNINGS
1 My Secret Life
2 Easing into a Routine
3 Neatening
FOOD
4 The Whys and Wherefores of Home Cooking
5 Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner
6 Serving Meals
7 Stimulating Beverages
8 The Center of a Dwelling
9 Kitchen Culture
10 To Market, to Market
11 Cold Comfort
12 Bread and Honey
13 Safe Food
CLOTH
14 The Fabric of Your Home
15 Transformations
16 The Natural Fibers
17 The Man-Made Fibers and Blends
18 Fabrics That Work
19 Carefully Disregarding Care Labels
20 Gathering, Storing, and Sorting Laundry
21 Laundering
22 Drying the Laundry
23 Ironing
24 Folding Clothes and Linens
25 How to Launder Tricky Items
26 Common Laundry Mishaps and Problems
27 Sanitizing the Laundry
28 Removing Stains from Fabrics
CLEANLINESS
29 The Air in Your Castle
30 Peaceful Coexistence with Microbes
31 The Chemistry of Household Cleaning
32 Aprons, Rags, and Mops
33 Dust and Dust Mites
34 Vacuuming, Sweeping, and Dusting
35 Textile Furnishings
36 Floors and Furniture of Wood and Woodlike Materials
37 Resilient Floors
38 Ceramic Tile
39 Stone
40 Man-Made Solid Surfaces and Other Plastics
41 Bathrooms
42 Pipes and Drains
43 Walls, Ceilings, Woodwork, and Windows
44 China and Crystal
45 Metals
46 Caring for Jewelry
DAILY LIFE
47 Kindly Light
48 Fireplaces
49 Some Quiet Occupations
50 Sewing
51 Caring for Books
52 Music
53 Images and Recordings
54 Home Offices and Computers
55 Pets
SLEEP
56 The Cave of Nakedness
57 Beds and Bedding
58 Closets for Clothes and Linens
SAFE SHELTER
59 Being Prepared
60 Fire
61 Electrical Safety
62 Slips and Falls
63 Further Miscellaneous Safety Rules
64 Poisons, Hazardous Substances, and Proper Disposal of Hazardous Household Wastes
65 Additional Safety Measures for Children
FORMALITIES
66 Understanding Your Castle
67 Too Late to Say You?re Sorry
68 Promises, Promises
69 Domestic Employment Laws
70 Working with Household Help
71 Insurance
72 Fond Records
NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND
SOURCES
INDEX
PREFACE