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Biographical Note:
Cheryl Mendelson is a Harvard Law School graduate, a sometime philosophy professor, a novelist (
Morningside Heights and
Love, Work, Children), and a homemaker by choice. Born into a rural family in Greene County, Pennsylvania, she now lives in New York City with her husband and son
Table of Contents:
Contents
Preface
BEGINNINGS
1 My Secret Life
2 Easing into a Routine
3 Neatening
FOOD
4 The Whys and Wherefores of Home Cooking
5 Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner
6 Serving Meals
7 Stimulating Beverages
8 The Center of a Dwelling
9 Kitchen Culture
10 To Market, to Market
11 Cold Comfort
12 Bread and Honey
13 Safe Food
CLOTH
14 The Fabric of Your Home
15 Transformations
16 The Natural Fibers
17 The Man-Made Fibers and Blends
18 Fabrics That Work
19 Carefully Disregarding Care Labels
20 Gathering, Storing, and Sorting Laundry
21 Laundering
22 Drying the Laundry
23 Ironing
24 Folding Clothes and Linens
25 How to Launder Tricky Items
26 Common Laundry Mishaps and Problems
27 Sanitizing the Laundry
28 Removing Stains from Fabrics
CLEANLINESS
29 The Air in Your Castle
30 Peaceful Coexistence with Microbes
31 The Chemistry of Household Cleaning
32 Aprons, Rags, and Mops
33 Dust and Dust Mites
34 Vacuuming, Sweeping, and Dusting
35 Textile Furnishings
36 Floors and Furniture of Wood and Woodlike Materials
37 Resilient Floors
38 Ceramic Tile
39 Stone
40 Man-Made Solid Surfaces and Other Plastics
41 Bathrooms
42 Pipes and Drains
43 Walls, Ceilings, Woodwork, and Windows
44 China and Crystal
45 Metals
46 Caring for Jewelry
DAILY LIFE
47 Kindly Light
48 Fireplaces
49 Some Quiet Occupations
50 Sewing
51 Caring for Books
52 Music
53 Images and Recordings
54 Home Offices and Computers
55 Pets
SLEEP
56 The Cave of Nakedness
57 Beds and Bedding
58 Closets for Clothes and Linens
SAFE SHELTER
59 Being Prepared
60 Fire
61 Electrical Safety
62 Slips and Falls
63 Further Miscellaneous Safety Rules
64 Poisons, Hazardous Substances, and Proper Disposal of Hazardous Household Wastes
65 Additional Safety Measures for Children
FORMALITIES
66 Understanding Your Castle
67 Too Late to Say You?re Sorry
68 Promises, Promises
69 Domestic Employment Laws
70 Working with Household Help
71 Insurance
72 Fond Records
NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND
SOURCES
INDEX
PREFACE
Review Quotes:
"The bible of good housekeeping."
-- People
Marc Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (p. [847]-855) and index.
Review Quotes:
"An extraordinary achievement that has no peer in this century and may well have none in the next." --
Newsweek
Review Quotes:
"
Home Comforts is to the house what
Joy of Cooking is to food."
--
USA Today
Review Quotes:
"Mesmerizing -- and, in its own way, revolutionary." --
Chicago Sun-Times
Review Quotes:
"There's only one book to own if you want to be serious about your housekeeping: Cheryl Mendelson's magesterial HOME COMFORTS."--Dwight Garner "The New York Times"
Publisher Marketing:
A classic bestselling resource for every household, Home Comforts helps you manage everyday chores, find creative solutions to domestic dilemmas, and enhance the experience of life at home.
"Home Comforts is to the house what Joy of Cooking is to food.
"
--USA TODAY
Home Comforts is an engaging and comprehensive book about housekeeping. It is a lively and readable guide for both beginners and experts in all the domestic arts. From keeping surfaces free of germs, watering plants, removing stains, folding a fitted sheet, cleaning china, tuning a piano, lighting a fire, setting the dining room table--this guide covers everything that people might want to do for themselves in their homes.
Further topics include: making up a bed with hospital corners, expert recommendations for safe food storage, reading care labels (and sometimes carefully disregarding them), keeping your home free of dust mites and other allergens, this is a practical, good-humored, philosophical guidebook to the art and science of household management.
Review Citations:
-
Ingram Advance 05/01/2005 pg. 108 (EAN 9780743272865, Paperback)
-
Wilson Nonfiction Catalog 04/11/2019 (EAN 9780743272865, Paperback)
-
Library Journal 08/01/1999 pg. 129 (EAN 9780684814650, Hardcover) - *Starred Review
-
Publishers Weekly 10/04/1999 pg. 71 (EAN 9780684814650, Hardcover)
-
People Weekly 11/01/1999 pg. 59 (EAN 9780684814650, Hardcover)
-
Newsweek 11/08/1999 pg. 96 (EAN 9780684814650, Hardcover)
-
New York Times 12/19/1999 pg. 12 (EAN 9780684814650, Hardcover)
-
Commonweal 12/07/2001 pg. 25 (EAN 9780684814650, Hardcover)
-
Wilson Nonfiction Catalog 04/11/2019 (EAN 9780684814650, Hardcover)
Contributor Bio:Mendelson, Cheryl
Cheryl Mendelson is a Harvard Law School graduate, a sometime philosophy professor, and a novelist (
Morningside Heights and
Love, Work, Children). In 1999, she authored the classic bestselling resource for every American household,
Home Comforts. Born into a rural family in Greene County, Pennsylvania, she lives in New York City with her husband.
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