Revisit the home-economics textbooks of yore to get the best vintage advice on shopping, cooking, decorating, and budgeting your way to a happy, healthy household “Housekeeping is becoming more and more a matter of science, and the laurels are bound to fall to the woman who conducts her household in a business-like way.” Let the thrifty sensibility of yesteryear be your guide as you shop for the most economical foods, choose wall colors scientifically, clean with natural products, look your best without breaking the bank, and budget your way to frugal efficiency. In this amazing collection of clever wisdom and practical advice drawn from vintage home-economics textbooks, you’ll find everything you need to get back to basics and run a healthy and happy household. Home Economics covers all the categories of delightful domesticity: • Health & Hygiene • Cookery & Recipes • Manners & Etiquette • Design & Decoration • Cleaning & Safety • Gardening & Crafts Rediscover the art and science of keeping house—economically!

The surprising, often fiercely feminist, always fascinating, yet barely known, history of home economics. The term “home economics” may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the twentieth century by reducing domestic work and providing jobs as professors, engineers, chemists, and businesspeople. And it has something to teach us today. In the surprising, often fiercely feminist and always fascinating The Secret History of Home Economics, Danielle Dreilinger traces the field’s history from Black colleges to Eleanor Roosevelt to Okinawa, from a Betty Crocker brigade to DIY techies. These women—and they were mostly women—became chemists and marketers, studied nutrition, health, and exercise, tested parachutes, created astronaut food, and took bold steps in childhood development and education. Home economics followed the currents of American culture even as it shaped them. Dreilinger brings forward the racism within the movement along with the strides taken by women of color who were influential leaders and innovators. She also looks at the personal lives of home economics’ women, as they chose to be single, share lives with other women, or try for egalitarian marriages. This groundbreaking and engaging history restores a denigrated subject to its rightful importance, as it reminds us that everyone should learn how to cook a meal, balance their account, and fight for a better world.

Did you remember your scissors? Discover the tremendous pleasure of learning how to do it yourself how to cook, sew, clean, and more, the way it used to be taught in Home Ec class. With illustrated step by step instructions, plus relevant charts, lists, and handy graphics, Home Ec for everyone offers a crash course in learning 118 practical life skills-everything from frosting the perfect birthday cake to fixing a zipper to whitening a dingy T-shirt to packing a suitcase (the right way). It’s all made clear in plain, nontechnical language for any level of DIYer, and it comes with a guarantee: No matter how simple the task, doing it with your own two hands provides a feeling of accomplishment that no app or device will ever give you.

Until recently, historians tended to dismiss home economics as little more than a conspiracy to keep women in the kitchen. This landmark volume initiates collaboration among home economists, family and consumer science professionals, and women's historians. What knits the essays together is a willingness to revisit the subject of home economics with neither indictment nor apology. The volume includes significant new work that places home economics in the twentieth century within the context of the development of women's professions. Rethinking Home Economics documents the evolution of a profession from the home economics movement launched by Ellen Richards in the early twentieth century to the modern field renamed Family and Consumer Sciences in 1994. The essays in this volume show the range of activities pursued under the rubric of home economics, from dietetics and parenting, teaching and cooperative extension work, to test kitchen and product development. Exploration of the ways in which gender, race, and class influenced women's options in colleges and universities, hospitals, business, and industry, as well as government has provided a greater understanding of the obstacles women encountered and the strategies they used to gain legitimacy as the field developed.

Home Economics Household Skills is a complete year's worth of curriculum. It combines Kitchen Skills along with Home & Personal Management Skills. Your daughter will practice the necessary skills to help make her become proficient in the household, her personal life, around the kitchen, as well as in relationships with others. Included is 36 week's worth of character trait study devotions to help her enhance true beauty that can only come from the inside. We have also included personal checklists and evaluations, and weekly teacher evaluations and graded sections. This is the single most important class that you can have your daughters take for their future. They can gain every skill in the educational realm but if they don't know how to grow in character and practical life skills they will be missing out on the basics of life.

An interdisciplinary effort of scholars from history, women's studies, and family and consumer sciences, Remaking Home Economics covers the field's history of opening career opportunities for women and responding to domestic and social issues. Calls to "bring back home economics" miss the point that it never went away, say Sharon Y. Nickols and Gwen Kay--home economics has been remaking itself, in study and practice, for more than a century. These new essays, relevant for a variety of fields--history, women's studies, STEM, and family and consumer sciences itself--take both current and historical perspectives on defining issues including home economics philosophy, social responsibility, and public outreach; food and clothing; gender and race in career settings; and challenges to the field's identity and continuity. Home economics history offers a rich case study for exploring common ground between the broader culture and this highly gendered profession. This volume describes the resourcefulness of past scholars and professionals who negotiated with cultural and institutional constraints to produce their work, as well as the innovations of contemporary practitioners who continue to change the profession, including its name and identity. The widespread urge to reclaim domestic skills, along with a continual need for fresh ways to address obesity, elder abuse, household debt, and other national problems affirms the field's vitality and relevance. This volume will foster dialogue both inside and outside the academy about the changes that have remade (and are remaking) family and consumer sciences.

Home Economics Kitchen Skills is an easy and precise way to help train up your daughters in the art of cooking. It is presented in weekly format and gives you all of the information and tools necessary to teach for one semester of school. It begins with the basics and builds upon each skill with new levels of learning. It includes over 170 personal favorite recipes from the authors large family kitchen. It is meant to equip your daughters to give them purpose and know-how in the home. Everyone needs to eat, but not everyone is skilled in cooking. This book will give you a foundation in learning how to prepare nutritious and delicious meals.

Stir It Up explores the changing aims of home economics while putting the phenomena of Martha Stewart, Rachael Ray, Ty Pennington, and the "Mommy Wars" into historical context.