Mrs. Meyer's Clean Home: No-Nonsense Advice that Will Inspire You to CLEAN like the DICKENS

The value of this book is it has a lot of sensible or common sense wisdom that home economic classes and our female elders taught us in decades past. Fact is, since the 80's more and more women have chosen to work outside the home while hiring someone to come in weekly to do cleaning. Research shows that many, many women this past year with economic slow downs, do not know how to clean using items found round the home. Many don't know how to iron, much less make a cake from scratch. One need only read the daily or weekly NYTimes articles on how people are discovering backyard chickens, vegetable gardens, and mending clothes rather than tossing them out. Thus for those who don't know how to do homemaking arts, this book is a good start.

This book is going to be a new automatic housewarming gift from me. Mrs. Meyer packs every page with valuable information, motivation, funny anecdotes, and handy tips. Somehow, even in the litany of cleaning tasks she teaches the reader to tackle, she doesn't make it seem like a daunting task to have a clean, pleasant home that makes you and your family feel happy. It helps that she's practical to the utmost. She raised nine children, and her standard of clean was not "immaculate," but rather, "livable." If you tend to get bogged down in trying to make everything perfectly clean, Mrs. Meyer will not only help you focus on organizing your attempts at cleaning and on doing something instead of nothing, she gives you the tools you need to do so. The book is organized by room (or area) of the house/yard, and includes a sample schedule of daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal cleaning tasks. Attempting to follow this schedule is strangely freeing. Even if we miss a day's tasks, there's a make-up/rest day built in, and Mrs. Meyer is encouraging and inspiring. There is no sense that a level of perfection can be reached while people are actually living in and enjoying the home, but she makes the reader feel inspired to at least try. And those attempts make visible improvements. An "emergency" guide for making the house seem clean when company is on the way is as indispensable as the rest of the book. Mrs. Meyer is also frugal and environmentally conscious, so her cleaning methods are focused on that angle, which I thought was fantastic. Even better, these inexpensive, non-hazardous methods actually work, often better than the purchased harsh chemicals. I highly recommend this book to anyone who doesn't have a staff to keep the house clean and organized.

One part hilarious and two parts no-nonsense, having a copy of MRS MEYERS CLEAN HOME is like having your smart, funny aunt around to tell it to you straight. With all the "green" books out there, it's about time that someone wrote a book on the old-fashioned way of "being conscious" and "reducing carbon footprint": Don't waste anything and take good care of what you have. I can't wait to bring it to my friend's housewarming party!

Whether we're trying to keep a one bedroom apartment clean or a huge house full of kids, we can always use help with cleaning. Mrs. Meyer's Clean Home could be the answer! Who is Mrs. Meyer? Thelma Meyer, mother of nine children, was the inspiration for the Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day line of natural cleaning products. This product line was developed by Thelma's daughter Monica. The purpose of the book is not to promote these products, but instead, tells us it's not what you clean with, it's also HOW you clean. The book offers many tips for do-it-yourself cleaners using basic ingredients like baking soda, lemon juice and vinegar. The book provides a recommended cleaning schedule, outlining tasks to be managed on a daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly basis. Chapters take the reader through the different rooms of the house with tips and detailed instructions for each of those rooms. I found this approach really helpful. On top that, for each room she gives you a list of helpful cleaning tools and products to have on hand. Usually books of this genre are dry , but that isn't the case with this book. The advice is straight-forward, and Mrs. Meyer's personality definitely shines through. I don't know about the rest of you, but I can always use advice and tips on how to clean better and faster. I would have loved to have this book when my kids were little. It would have saved me from a few disasters they created. (Ask me sometime about the crib full of chocolate ice cream!) An emphasis is placed on using natural, non-toxic products where possible and conserving water and energy. Mrs. Meyer's Clean Home will be available in bookstores on 3/2/09

To someone who is learning how to keep house for the first time on their own, this book is a godsend! Since moving into my own place, I've been learning that cleaning the house is NOT an easy task but it's something that must be done. This book will help out the complete novice who's never had to clean a day in their life to the well seasoned housekeeper who knows all the little tricks of the trade. The book tackles each room in the house in their own chapter. Throughout that chapter, the reader learns how to maintain everything in the room from shelves to the ceiling, under the bed to the shower curtains, practically everything you could imagine. There's little tips and tricks throughout the book that will grab your attention and make you want to try them out immediately. Each chapter starts off with a toolbox list of the things you will need to clean each particular room. Pretty much everything is on grounds for cleaning down to your car and driveway and your pets as well. It's written in an informative yet entertaining style. Even those who are neat freaks and clean every day will get a kick out of this book. Really there's no excuse for you to say you don't have time or don't know how to clean after reading this book. This is a book that every home should have a copy of. Like the last page of the book says: "A Clean Home is a Happy Home!"