Smart Housekeeping: The No-Nonsense Guide to Decluttering, Organizing, and Cleaning Your Home, or Keys to Making Your Home Suit Yourself with No Help from Fads, Fanatics, or Other Foolishness
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About this ebook
SPECIAL NOTE! -- ANNE WILL PERSONALLY ANSWER ANY QUESTION OF YOURS AFTER READING THIS BOOK. ASK ON HER WEB SITE, AND YOU'LL NORMALLY HEAR BACK WITHIN HOURS!
There's no shortage of experts to cheerfully advise you on how to declutter, organize, and clean your home. But do they know what YOU want and need? Or are they only pushing rigid, quirky systems that ignore people's differences and how we really live?
With insight, wit, and common sense, "Smart Housekeeping" cuts through the clutter of questionable and often silly advice to offer practical keys to reclaiming and maintaining your home.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////
Anne L. Watson is the author of a variety of works, including literary novels, soapmaking manuals, and two cookie cookbooks. She is also retired from a long and honored career as a historic preservation architecture consultant. Anne "lives apart together" with her husband, fellow author, and publisher, Aaron Shepard, in Bellingham, Washington.
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Smart Housekeeping - Anne L. Watson
SMART HOUSEKEEPING
The No-Nonsense Guide to Decluttering, Organizing, and Cleaning Your Home
OR
Keys to Making Your Home Suit Yourself with No Help from Fads, Fanatics, or Other Foolishness
By Anne L. Watson
Shepard Publications
Bellingham, Washington
Copyright © 2016, 2018 by
Anne L.
Watson
Mouse House
photo created by Anne L. Watson and Aaron Shepard. Felted mice created by Diyana Stankova and used with permission.
Ebook Version 1.5
Anne L. Watson is the author of several soapmaking manuals,
a cookie
cookbook,
a book
on living apart together,
and many literary novels. She is also retired from a long and honored career as a historic preservation architecture consultant. Anne and her husband, Aaron Shepard, live in Bellingham, Washington.
The Smart Housekeeping Series
Smart Housekeeping
~ Smart Housekeeping Around
the
Year
The Smart Soapmaking Series
Smart Soapmaking
~
Milk Soapmaking
~
Smart Lotionmaking
~
Castile Soapmaking
~
Cool
Soapmaking
Cookbooks
Baking with Cookie Molds
~ Cookie Molds Around
the
Year
Lifestyle
Living Apart
Together
Novels
Skeeter: A Cat Tale
~
Pacific Avenue
~ Joy ~ Flight ~
Cassie’s Castaways
~
Willow’s Crystal
~
Benecia’s Mirror
~
A Chambered Nautilus
~ Departure
Children’s Books
Katie Mouse and the Perfect Wedding ~ Katie Mouse and the Christmas Door
For updates and more resources,
visit Anne’s Smart Housekeeping
Page at
www.annelwatson.com/housekeeping
So Merlyn sent you to me,
said the badger, "to finish your education. Well,
I can
only teach you two things — to dig, and love your home. These are the true end of philosophy."
T. H. White, The Once and Future King
Home is where one starts from.
T. S. Eliot
Getting Started
Did your book open here automatically?
Please page backward or jump to the beginning!
Most of us love our homes. But it’s a complicated love, with a lot of daily frustration. Our homes seem to endlessly demand our time, attention, and money.
Even when we know that love involves giving — and usually giving something up — we may wonder why our homes make us feel so inadequate. Are they ever clean enough, organized enough, attractive enough?
It should help when we’ve given up the idea that one person should — or even can — be a full-time housekeeper. Then why doesn’t it? Maybe it’s because, at the same time, we still expect to be judged if our places aren’t perfect! We still dread the bad opinion of friends, neighbors, our own families.
Or maybe it’s all those homemaking magazines, with their glossy photos of huge, spotless rooms, all furnished in the latest styles and painted in the trendiest colors. It’s not just magazines, either.
I can
think of at least one housekeeping book that, after advising us not to hold ourselves to perfectionistic standards, then shows photographs of immaculate staged interiors.
Or maybe it’s those books that declare how tranquil, holy, and stress-free our lives would be if we just got rid of the clutter. The problem is, those books presume to tell us what’s clutter and what’s not, and to shame us for holding on to things we don’t want to let go. Joy does not come from being bullied into making your home fit someone else’s idea of order. You get joy from your home when it fits you — whoever you are and whatever you truly want.
What if your home was your place to love, to be comfortable in, to express yourself in, and to share through hospitality for the enjoyment of others? The place where you feel most like yourself? The place that shelters — in every sense of that word — you and your loved ones?
If a bit of advice on organization and cleaning can bring you closer to that love and enjoyment, read on. But remember, whatever you do should be for your own benefit, not to meet standards set by books or magazines or your next-door neighbor.
In the end, your home is yours — yours to be shaped the way you love.
What This Book Is —
and
Isn’t
This book is a collection of tips on housekeeping and household organization — on making your home easier to live in. It’s a take-as-needed cafeteria of suggestions to adopt or expand on. Some ideas will trigger aha
moments for one person, while not at all appealing to another. Most of what I suggest will fit easily within a small budget — and if you’re a renter, it won’t make you lose your damage deposit!
The book can help
if . . .
• You’re distressed by your home’s disorder, and you just don’t know how to
fix it.
• You’re downsizing or moving to a
new
home
.
• You run around every morning looking for keys, papers, or articles of clothing.
• You buy duplicates of things because you can’t find the ones
you
have
.
• You wish you could have guests but don’t want anyone to see
the
mess
.
• You