Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House

So much information in this!

This book is amazing! She goes over everything from canning, to how to properly make tea, to how to organize your cleaning by days, rooms, and more. She covers how to properly care for the fabrics found all over your home, guides you in choosing the right towels and rugs, and goes over practical things like ironing and how to avoid common laundry mistakes. If you're crunchy, you may enjoy the metals chapter that goes over what may be found in many household appliances and tools so you make appropriate decisions based on what type of home life you wish to have! Everything you may need to build a well-functioning household like a pro, you'll find in this book. I'm so grateful I got it.

Sometimes you have to go back to basics and work from the “why” THEN the “how to”

I love this book! I first found it at our local library, read it and then had to buy it. It is full of all sorts of information on keeping house, not just what to do and how to do it, but why it is important. The book is easy to read. Anything you can think of that has to do with keeping house can be found in this book. It is a must-have for everyone who has a house to keep.

Mendelson's lucid prose transforms the hot-button subject of homemaking (which is more than just housekeeping) into an activity worthy of time and attention. Without the slightest preachiness, she covers everything you need to know to run a home efficiently. Her gentle, practical tone eliminates any need for defensiveness, so it is possible to glimpse her vision of the pleasantness of order. The book is more like a detailed, well-organized textbook than a "helpful hints" manual. For example, the "Cloth" section begins with descriptions of modern fabrics, and thoroughly discusses everything relevant to choosing, laundering, ironing, folding, removing stains, sanitizing (for contagious diseases, lice, or poison ivy), and troubleshooting fabric difficulties. And she manages to make it interesting!My mother, whose home was perfectly maintained, used many of Mendelson's techniques and scheduling ideas, but never passed them on to me (she preferred to do it herself so that it would be done "right") so I grew up feeling that housework was something I couldn't successfully do.Since there are few things more depressing than feeling incompetant, I've tried to learn homemaking through trial and error. This book would have eliminated much of the error, and provided a much shorter and more pleasant learning curve.I recommend this book to anyone who has a home or wants to be prepared to maintain one. It's well worth the price.

"Home Comforts" is a massive guide to the fundamentals of keeping house. An engaging writer (on a subject I NEVER would have thought I would care about), Ms. Mendelson provides a thorough reference to caring for one's home and possessions, from the proper way to clean wood floors to how to lower one's dry-cleaning expenses to safety matters. For someone like me who never really learned how to keep house, this is an essential reference. Yes, the author is often obssessive--and she freely admits to that charge. (Has Martha Stewart ever done so?) In fact, she details which chores she believes are essential and which tasks are obssessive. But her advice seems to be generally sound and thoroughly researched, especially when it comes to explaining the scientific & medical reasons of why certain tasks should be done in certain ways. (The chapter on dust mites is, frankly, slightly terrifying.) This isn't a book about decorating or crafts for the home or time management (though there is some advice about organizing). There are dozens of other sources for those subjects--take this for what it is. It's fantastic, and it's changed the way my husband and I keep our house. I wish more books--fiction and non-fiction--could be so well-written.

One of the highlights of the Cheryl Mendelson's book is the suggestion for schedules - what should be done daily, weekly, monthly, etc.In the past, the only cleaning I did during the week was wash the dishes, clean the counters and take out the garbage. That left weekends as the only time to launder, dust, vacuum, and on and on.Needless to say, weekends were not a lot of fun and the feeling of peace that you feel when you're in a clean home only existed for one or two days.Thank you, Ms Mendelson, for helping me find a way to have a comfortable home 7 days a week and time to enjoy my week-ends!