A Housekeeping Bible (Home Comforts - Cheryl Mendelson)

Member Name: snowflake5

Product:	Home Comforts - Cheryl Mendelson
Date:	04/01/06 (699 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A great reference book

Disadvantages: None

Home Comforts is a book about housekeeping - it's been described as the most comprehensive household management book since Mrs Beeton's tome of 1861. Modern household management that is, because it addresses the needs of the modern home.

Cheryl Mendelson, the author, starts off by describing the modern home "Comfort and engagement at home have diminished to the point that simple cleanliness and decent meals are no longer taken for granted", she writes. "Homes often seem to operate on an ad hoc basis....... Dirt, dust and disorder are more common than they used to be......Cleaning and tidying are done mostly when the house seems out of control."

She points out that in systematic households, most of the time you live comfortably, whereas in unsystematic households, the only time it's comfortable is just after strenuous emergency measures have been taken, the rest of the time, you live badly.

She goes on to suggest simple routines. One idea I liked was doing a mini-clean in between the weekly major clean, because it reduced the amount of work. She also suggests an order of work; starting upstairs, working your way down; doing the dry rooms before the wet ones; beginning with tasks that require waiting periods eg stripping the beds so they can air, while you get on with other tasks.

Despite these initial chapters on household routines, this book is really a reference book - most of the chapters tackle in comprehensive detail every aspect of the modern home.

For instance, she gives a detailed breakdown of the materials used in cooking pots: copper has the highest heat conductivity but it's best to buy copper lined on the inside with stainless steel as copper tends to react with some foods (particularly acidic ones) and can make you ill if you injest too much. Aluminium pots also leach aluminium into food.

The section on food gives a very good guide as to how long things can be kept. She is not against ready meals - she points out that bread, breakfast cereal, dried pasta, icecream etc are in fact ready meals introduced in the 1950's (prior to that people made them from scratch) - and apparently the old-fashioned housekeepers of the day curled their lips in much the same way some people now do at the idea of microwave meals! Instead of rejecting ready meals per se, she suggests making the decision whether to use them based on cost and nutrition.

She explains things like the egg grading system (which I didn't really know about); Grade A is the freshest, B less fresh and C only sold to food manufacturers.

She gives a guide to common food pathogens - moulds, parasites, different types of bacteria (e.coli, listeria, salmonella, shingella) and viruses (I had not realised that Hepatitis A is spread through food) and describes how they get into food, the illnesses they cause, how to avoid them and how to kill them.

She discusses air quality in the home. Apparently old-fashioned uninsulated homes had a complete exchange of air each hour, which was good for the health but bad for the heating bills. Modern homes decrease the change of air, reducing the bills but increasing indoor pollution - humidity increases, the percentage of oxygen decreases, volatile compounds contained in cleaning products linger.

The book also covers the following:

* Advice on how to clean the fridge, oven and microwave.

* How to preserve and care for carpets and upholstery.

* How to look after wooden floors, stone floors and ceramic tiling

* Dust, dust mites and how to deal with them.

* How to remove stains like milk, wine, nail varnish, ink, etc.

* How to clean and maintain pipes and drains

* How to care for jewelery, china, crystal, pianos and books

* How to preserve photographs

* A section on fabrics, natural and man-made, how they react to different weathers, how to care for them.

* A comprehensive guide to choosing mattresses, beds and bedding

* How to read laundry labels and guidance on when you can ignore the label

* A comprehensive section on the different types of lighting (it's all about colour rendition and lumen ratings apparently!)

* Pets and how to deal with their messes

* Electrical goods and electrical safety

* A section on the law as regards you home; privacy, planning controls and building regulations, the law on tresspass, the law on nuisance

* A section on household help, covering everything from how to hire to your legal responsibilities as an employer


For the historically curious, there are also interesting snippets of information on how housekeping was conducted in earlier times. One of the most amusing anecdotes concerns dusting - an 1842 manual by Catherine Beecher thought sweeping the carpet and dusting once a week was good enough, but by 1908, the manuals demanded daily dusting and sweeping. By 1950, this had ballooned into a monster recommendation to clean everything including window frames and all woodwork every day! But the modern view has reverted to thinking that the 1842 idea is the most reasonable.

This book is a doorstep of a reference book coming in at 835 pages. I found it interesting and useful. I'm already following the advice on airing the house and the beds and on the household routines. It's the sort of reference book you need on your shelf next to the medical book, in case something comes up that you arn't sure of how to deal with.

This is a hardback and the recommended retail price is £25, but I bought a new copy at a discounter for £3.99. You can also find it at amazon.so.uk from £5.26 used and £7.30 new..

Summary: This book covers everything you need to know about housekeeping