Almacks's Full Review: Cheryl Mendelson - Home Comforts: The Art And Scie...
I bought a copy of this book a few weeks ago and loved it immediately. I recently bought it for a friend of mine for her bridal shower. It is a book that should be in every house where the residents hope to have a well run and beautiful home.
Over the past 40 years, few personages have been as devalued as the "housewife". She has been generally trashed, stereotyped, trivialized and disregarded. Patronizingly considered at best a frustrated, bored mop-pusher in heels and pearls who should "get a life", and at worst a brainless "Peg Bundy" concerned with nothing but eating bon bons and watching soap operas, this book has finally, at the turn of a new century, given the homemaker back some of the dignity with which she was regarded in a previous (pre-1960s) era.
Sadly, over the decades of disregard of the housewife, many of the arts of homemaking fell into disrepute and have largely faded from use. This book takes some major steps in bringing them back. Whereas most housekeeping books of the 70s, 80s and 90s (such as Mary Ellen and Eloise) are essentially books of housekeeping "hints" designed to get housework done fast, this one isn't about doing it fast. It's about doing it RIGHT.
Some of the myriad chapters of this book include the care and cleaning of a kitchen, how to shop for groceries, how to clean and organize a refrigerator, how to sweep and mop floors, how to sort, wash, iron, and fold laundry, how to make a bed, how to vacuum rugs, how to dust furniture, how to care for antiques, books and bric a brac, how to care for photographs, videotapes and cassettes, how to set up a home office, how to beat rugs and pillows, how to wash and dry dishes by hand, how to load a dishwasher, how to clean a shower curtain, how to polish silver. It goes on and on. All those housewifely arts that in a previous generation girls were taught by their mothers or by the home economics classes that have largely vanished from our schools.
Get Home Comforts! It is a book that has a place in every home. If you are looking for a gift for a bridal shower, new housewarming party, college graduation or any time a person is setting out on life in their own house or apartment, it is a perfect one. If you yourself have decided to embark on the worthy career of homemaker, this is a book to invest in for yourself. I rarely have found a book I can recommend so wholeheartedly. I have quite literally never seen anything like it!
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