This is a revised and expanded version of The American Woman's Home Gerritsen no. 198.4.

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.

One of The New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2015 One of Jezebel's Favorite Books of 2016 A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the Laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers and bad Christians. Readers will revel in this remarkable collection from a master of the form and wonder how they'd ever overlooked her in the first place. "Perhaps, with the present collection, Lucia Berlin will begin to gain the attention she deserves." -Lydia Davis

Whether your home is small or large, an apartment in the city or a country cottage, it is a space that should be at once beautiful and livable. The key to that is managing the upkeep without feeling flustered. Until now, there has never been a comprehensive resource that not only tells how to care for your home and everything in it, but that also simplifies the process by explaining just when. With secrets from Martha Stewart for accomplishing the most challenging homekeeping tasks with ease, this detailed and comprehensive book is the only one you will need to help you keep your home looking its best, floor to ceiling, room by room. In Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook, Martha shares her unparalleled expertise in home maintenance and care. Readable and practical–and graced with charts, sidebars, illustrated techniques, and personal anecdotes from Martha’s decades of experience caring for her homes– this is far more than just a compendium of ways to keep your house clean. It covers everything from properly executing a living room floor plan to setting a formal table; from choosing HEPA filters to sealing soapstone countertops; from organizing your home office to polishing your silver and caring for family heirlooms. Martha Stewart’ s Homekeeping Handbook is organized for clarity and maximum practicality: Room by Room covers the upkeep of the appliances, tools, furnishings, and surfaces found in each room, from the entryway to the kitchen, from the attic to the laundry room. Throughout the House instructs the reader on the proper ways to routinely clean and periodically maintain everything in the home, including dusting, sweeping, vacuuming, polishing, scrubbing, waxing and much more. Comfort and Safety focuses on techniques to ensure your home is running properly and safely, such as recognizing when to clean vents, fixing a leaky faucet, and eradicating pests. A-to-Z Materials Guide provides an invaluable resource that explains the unusual materials that many favorite objects are made of–from abalone to zinc–and how to care for them so they last. Encyclopedic yet friendly, Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook is a seminal work–a must-have for everyone who wants a well-cared-for home that will endure for generations.

What is our intention with the book? Imparting knowledge and experience in step with actual practice and future trends to everybody concerned with housekeeping and managing procedures for housekeeping. Reading the book you will find answers to these questions: What is the farsighted housekeepers knowledge on guests expectations and trends? How to optimize the housekeeping department with regard to permanent cost pressure? When is a room considered clean and tidy? How to handle the building equipment and appliances and how to set up an adequate maintenance plan? How to organize efficient and environmental opera-tions for the hotel laundry? How can an ABC or Ishikawa failure analysis help to improve quality? What to do to operate the hotel environmentally? With the information of the book, I wish to sensitize professionals and managers from tourism, hotel CEOs, executive officers and managers, supervisors, room division managers, trainees, students and career changers for ambitious housekeeping.

The wildly popular YouTube star behind Clean My Space presents the breakthrough solution to cleaning better with less effort Melissa Maker is beloved by fans all over the world for her completely re-engineered approach to cleaning. As the dynamic new authority on home and living, Melissa knows that to invest any of our precious time in cleaning, we need to see big, long-lasting results. So, she developed her method to help us get the most out of our effort and keep our homes fresh and welcoming every day. In her long-awaited debut book, she shares her revolutionary 3-step solution: • Identify the most important areas (MIAs) in your home that need attention • Select the proper products, tools, and techniques (PTT) for the job • Implement these new cleaning routines so that they stick Clean My Space takes the chore out of cleaning with Melissa’s incredible tips and cleaning hacks (the power of pretreating!) her lightning fast 5-10 minute “express clean” routines for every room when time is tightest, and her techniques for cleaning even the most daunting places and spaces. And a big bonus: Melissa gives guidance on the best non-toxic, eco-conscious cleaning products and offers natural cleaning solution recipes you can make at home using essential oils to soothe and refresh. With Melissa’s simple groundbreaking method you can truly live in a cleaner, more cheerful, and calming home all the time.