Virtually everyone enjoys a crisply ironed dress shirt, clean sheets on a well-made bed, and a savory home-cooked meal. Yet housekeeping today stands as a somewhat neglected, if not maligned, job. But as author Cheryl Mendelson points out in Home Comforts, keeping house well can be a rewarding position--it allows you to provide for the physical and emotional comfort of loved ones. It's also not an easy job--there's much to be learned about properly managing a home, and Mendelson has set out to provide a guide to doing just that.

Mendelson, a homemaker, lawyer, and mother, learned about housekeeping from an early age from her grandmothers, one Appalachian, the other Italian. The two grandmothers taught her that although different ways of keeping house can be appropriate, there are generally smarter, faster, and more creative ways of housekeeping that make it less of a chore and more of an art. In a practical, authoritative tone, Mendelson discusses the ins and outs of homemaking, such as washing dishes, recommended cleaning methods for various surfaces, housekeeping for those with pets or allergies, and emergency preparedness and safety procedures.

Mendelson's well-researched book includes meticulous sections on food (for example, which foods belong in the fridge versus the pantry, food storage times, picking the freshest fruits and vegetables, and keeping your kitchen and food sanitary) as well as laundry (caring for various fabrics, how to read--and read between the lines of--clothing care labels, and removing stains). Mendelson covers a lot of ground, and as she herself points out, readers shouldn't feel required to do everything mentioned in the book--simply pick the activities that seem appropriate for your particular home. This is a comprehensive reference book that should serve homemakers well and induce a greater appreciation for the effort and specialized knowledge that go into keeping house. --Kris Law


From Library Journal
Unlike the shelves of short-cut manuals for people who don't enjoy housework, Mendelson's comprehensive book is for the person who wants detailed information on every aspect of setting up and maintaining a clean, well-functioning home. Building on the strong domestic skills she learned from her family, Mendelson, a lawyer, did careful research, incorporating current recommendations from experts. There are extensive sections on food, clothing, cleanliness, daily life, and safety, with information on negligence, domestic employment laws, insurance, and even the impact of clothing label laws on our laundry. Preferred methods are explained in detail, and some alternatives are offered for those who need to compromise. This is a valuable tool for today's masses, who aren't learning domestic skills from their elders. Readers with only a cursory interest or those wanting a highly illustrated guide may prefer Reader's Digest's Householder's Survival Manual (1999). Highly recommended.ABonnie Poquette, Shorewood P.L., WI Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Corby Kummer
Mendelson approaches housekeeping as a vocation, and each reader will draw his or her own line between devoutness and fanaticism.


Review
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese author of Feminism Is Not the Story of My Life and Feminism Without Illusions A treasure trove of invaluable information, a delight to read, a marvel of thoughtful common sense, Home Comforts is all this and more. Recent changes in women's lives and expectations have tended to relegate keeping house to the realm of servant's work -- the epitome of what no self-respecting woman (or man) would choose to do. In this entrancing book, Cheryl Mendelson restores keeping house to its rightful place as the custodian of the peace, order, comfort, and sanity of our lives, simultaneously instructing us in how to do it well and in why doing it matters so much. And in so doing, she helps to restore dignity, value, and craft to the work that creates and sustains the private space that nourishes our humanity.


Book Description
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 ·


About the Author
Cheryl Mendelson received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester and her J.D. from Harvard Law School. She has practiced law in New York City and has taught philosophy at Purdue and Columbia Universities. She lives in New York City with her husband and son.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Joy of Housekeeping...Really!

Cheryl Mendelson paints an amusing picture of the beginnings of her passion for housekeeping: "My domestic education was a battlefield in a subtle war between my two grandmothers." Indeed, her Italian grandmother kept rooms airy and light with flowers sprouting in porcelain pots on windowsills. Her Anglo-American grandmother, on the other hand, kept rooms shaded almost to darkness against real and fancied harmful effects of light and air. Mendelson's own housekeeping habits fall somewhere in between the two. The result is a contemporary interpretation of the art of housekeeping. From germ consciousness to the finer points of cleaning and laundering, Mendelson warmly and expertly shares her knowledge of how to keep house.

In Mendelson's first selection, "Food," she begins with a discussion about "The Whys and Wherefores of Home Cooking," because "good meals at home satisfy emotional hungers as real as hunger in the belly." Mendelson claims that most people eat out not because they lack the time to cook but because they don't know how to cook well enough to make good quick meals. She then teaches us how. From "Kitchen Culture" to "Safe Food," Mendelson covers topics such as stocking and organizing a kitchen, washing and preparing food, cooking and storing food safely, and cleaning and protecting kitchens against bacteria. An extensive chart on food storage provides specific guidelines for the proper shelf life of dry, refrigerated, and frozen foods, as well as fresh produce.

Mendelson's second section, "Cloth," is based on her philosophy that "the emotional warmth and security of a home depends...on cool sheets, soft carpets...and thick towels." Unfortunately, she claims, while most people today know what they like once they feel a particular type of cloth, they don't know how to look or ask for these fabrics or how to care for them once they bring them home. With this in mind, she provides a comprehensive discussion of the fabrics found in homes today, from clothing and linens to carpet and upholstery. In addition to her descriptions, she uses black-and-white line drawings to illustrate the construction of different fabrics and includes chapters on natural fabrics (linen, cotton, wool, silk) and man-made fabrics (rayon, nylon, polyester, spandex, and blends). Other chapters cover laundering tricky items, sanitizing the laundry, and removing stains from fabrics.

Mendelson's section on "Cleanliness" begins with "The Air in Your Castle," a chapter on the importance of keeping your home ventilated, as well as monitoring temperature, humidity, and air pollution. In "Dust and Dust Mites" she specifically attacks the problem of dust, since "dust under the sofa becomes dust in the nose, the eye, the soup," and provides directions for vacuuming, sweeping, and dusting the home. Mendelson also takes up, rather heatedly, the problem of germs and bacteria: what they are and how to get rid of them. She provides a glossary of sanitizers and disinfectants and provides guidelines for the use of each one, and she offers alternatives such as recipes for homemade cleaners and includes helpful suggestions for how to gather the appropriate clothes, rags, and tools for each cleaning project.

And finally, just in case you've run out of things to clean, she gives instructions for how to properly care for bathrooms, windows, pipes and drains, woodwork, textiles, walls, ceilings, floors even china, crystal, metals, and jewelry -- anything and everything in a home that might need cleaning.

The final sections of Home Comforts are shorter but just as thorough. In "Sleep," she provides an intimate portrait of the bedroom, a place for "sleeping, lovemaking, dressing, and undressing," and claims that "keeping dust down in the bedroom does more to promote health and comfort than any other cleaning in your home (with the exception of the kitchen)." She provides detailed instructions for how to make a bed, stock comfortable sheets and blankets, keep closets aired and cleaned, and even includes some "housecraftly helps for insomnia."

Mendelson's interest in keeping house is certainly a passion. But lucky for us, it's one she's willing to share. Home Comforts is available for anyone and everyone with an interest in the home and the comforts we find there.

—Lara Carrigan

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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 thehistory 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.

SYNOPSIS

This well researched book on the art of "keeping" a clean, smoothly-functioning home reinforces many traditional housekeeping methods that may have been forgotten (or never learned!) as it incorporates current recommendations from experts. Packed with practical know-how that addresses everything from food safety and fabric care to the details that can make your home or apartment a truly comforting place.

FROM THE CRITICS

Katy Kelly - USA Today

Cheryl Mendelson's Home Comforts is the ultimate how-to book for homemaking.

Newsweek

It's an extraordinary achievement that has no peer in this century and may well have none in the next.

Library Journal

Unlike the shelves of short-cut manuals for people who don't enjoy housework, Mendelson's comprehensive book is for the person who wants detailed information on every aspect of setting up and maintaining a clean, well-functioning home. Building on the strong domestic skills she learned from her family, Mendelson, a lawyer, did careful research, incorporating current recommendations from experts. There are extensive sections on food, clothing, cleanliness, daily life, and safety, with information on negligence, domestic employment laws, insurance, and even the impact of clothing label laws on our laundry. Preferred methods are explained in detail, and some alternatives are offered for those who need to compromise. This is a valuable tool for today's masses, who aren't learning domestic skills from their elders. Readers with only a cursory interest or those wanting a highly illustrated guide may prefer Reader's Digest's Householder's Survival Manual (1999). Highly recommended.--Bonnie Poquette, Shorewood P.L., WI Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Weekly Editors Entertainment

Okay, so Mendelson does occasionally go over the top (the best way to scrub a floor, she says, is on your hands and knees), but this 884-page reference book is about much more than cleaning: It's about turning a house into a home.

Alison Rogers - Brill's Content