A common complaint about child-rearing is that “they” send you home from the hospital with no manual. How are we supposed to know what to do with these mysterious, sometimes screaming creatures? Firstly, it’s odd that our culture seems to ascribe ownership of our newborn flesh-and-blood to the experts at the local hospital. Secondly, there are manuals.
Many comprehensive instructional texts exist, which can walk you through, step by itty bitty step, the process of putting on a baby’s onesie or adequately feeding for the first year of life. Perhaps there was a time for many people in generations past when such information was part of the shared knowledge base, helpful factoids, tips, and strategies that most people were aware of. Now, so rarely holding a wiggling, wrinkled, toothless infant in your own two hands, that knowledge may not be readily available. But there are books.
A reference manual for homemaking
The same is true of the domestic arts. What was once part of the rhythm of ordinary life is now viewed as complex and opaque. At best viewed as an eccentric hobby, at worst as an unpleasant occupation for low-skilled labor, keeping house is something that affects us all. In her beloved tome on the subject, Cheryl Mendelson makes a compelling case that the domestic arts are accessible and worthy of pursuit for anyone who desires the joys of home.
Mendelson’s 800-plus page explication of domesticity, Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, was the compendium many people didn’t know they needed. Published in 1999, the book became a surprise success and continues to win ardent fans. What is the attraction of a book that sounds so dry?
Mendelson is a philosopher and lawyer by training. In Home Comforts, the reader beholds the intellect of a woman trained in precision unleashed upon the subject of home life and technical maneuvering in cleaning, care, and creation. Covering everything from table-setting to proper laundering, the book offers eight years’ worth of research into tools and technique. Objects that have inexplicably occupied corners in the homes of older relatives will have an explanation of function under Mendelson’s deft care. Options one never knew existed will be presented with an authoritative assessment of pros and cons.
More than just the facts: Homemaking and the soul
What makes the book, however, is not the volume of information but the grand vision Mendelson offers. So many post-modern homemakers desperate for meaning get sidetracked with vacuuming crumbs and disinfecting surfaces, losing a sense of the soul. Mendelson speaks to the soul, a spark of divinity so many of us don’t even know we have most days.
In the introduction, Mendelson writes, “The sense of being at home is important to everyone’s well-being. If you do not get enough of it, your happiness, resilience, energy, humor, and courage will decrease. It is a complex thing, an amalgam. In part, it is a sense of having special rights, dignities, and entitlements — and these are legal realities, not just emotional states. It includes familiarity, warmth, affection, and a conviction of security. Being at home feels safe; you have a sense of relief whenever you come home and close the door behind you, reduced fear of social and emotional dangers as well as physical ones.”
Throughout her book, Mendelson offers encouragement to those who love home, no matter their state in life. She invites people to care about things that cause others to be embarrassed—she accurately portrays the outrage of many dinner guests who encounter something cooked from scratch. So many of us have been trained to find offensive things we deem “a waste of time.” Mendelson, who spent the first 13 years of her life on a farm in Appalachia and then moved to the suburban wasteland of Florida, reminisces about the homes of her two grandmothers, one Italian and one British. Though distinct in aesthetic and cleaning regimes, the two homes offered that “amalgam” Mendelson refers to, that je ne said pas that makes a place special and welcoming, civilized and domestic in the full sense.
A defense of the domestic arts
In defense of writing a book about homemaking, a subject poo-poohed by so much of our career-obsessed middle-class, Mendelson said in an interview, “Most intelligent people realize that their homes are essential to their well-being. But to have someone say so has become unusual. And to have the book taken as being only about housecleaning–well, that was a reaction I didn’t expect.”
She went on to say that the vanishing domestic sphere holds elements “that are culturally deep and that are not easy to get back.” She explained, “When you begin to give up domesticity, when your life no longer demands it, or when you feel you have no time for it, there’s a tremendous loss going on.” She added, “And there’s a whole way of life being sacrificed that has nothing to do with cleaning the floors or keeping mold off the tiles. Those things are really not of enormous concern to me except in so far as there are health concerns to think about.”
As she iterates throughout the book, perfection and mere sanitation are not the aim. Speaking with her alma mater the University of Rochester, she said, “You have to look at what matters. My health matters. My comfort matters. And my sense of beauty matters. If cleaning is required to support these things, I’ll do it.” Despite continued misrepresentations of her position, she concluded, “But beyond that, give yourself a break.”
Such an extensive text can be intimidating. It is a book that does well with flipping from section to section, whatever strikes your curiosity. When educating children, choosing a topic, for example making the bed, and having older children or teens master different techniques and choose the one they most enjoy might be an amusing way to introduce greater attention to the details of the home environment.
Feminist object for no good reason
As always, the tolerant and open-minded feminists can’t leave something well enough alone and have to go braying and raising pitchforks. Mendelson was accused of conspiring against women. Ah, yes, the old “experienced lawyer and philosophy professor sending women back to the kitchen with an 800-page book” trope. Anti-feminism!
As it so often goes, the ire reveals more about the pasteboard caricatures on which feminism relies than anything about Mendelson’s work. She is no shrinking violet hidden away in the house. Having worked in several prominent law firms before becoming a philosophy professor and then accomplished novelist and nonfiction writer with a passionate interest in homemaking, Mendelson has the benefit of broad experience. She writes in her introduction that the idea that housework is boring is far from accurate; she quips, “It is actually lawyers who are most familiar with the experience of unintelligent drudgery.”
No, as Mendelson’s journey through products, techniques, aesthetic, and the intangible marvels of home demonstrates, homemaking holds great potential for creativity, simple beauty, and enjoyment of a job well done. As Tasha Tudor eloquently stated, “I enjoy doing housework, ironing, washing, cooking, dishwashing. Whenever I get one of those questionaires and they ask what is your profession, I always put down housewife. It’s an admirable profession, why apologize for it. You aren’t stupid because you’re a housewife. When you’re stirring the jam you can read Shakespeare.”
It’s delicious to note that some of the feminists who wrote scathing reviews admitted they adopted some of the techniques Mendelson suggests. Ah, the poetic justice!
If a heady investigation of all things housekeeping sounds intriguing or you simply want a guide into the world of domestic arts, Home Comforts is a reference book worth keeping on the shelf. Precisely how organized and dust-free the shelf is you decide.
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