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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
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
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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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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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.
 

LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 20, 2021
ISBN9781620352113
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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    Book preview

    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

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