Customer Reviews

Guide to Easier Living

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this book when it had just come out and I was newly married. Ive used it so much that it is in tatters, but I still treasure it. The information and illustrations of storage closets, kitchens, general home layouts, etc. are still as useful and inspiring today as they were back in the 1950s. Their sections on choices and care of products for the home: floors, etc are still valid. Their discussions of time and motion techniques in cooking, house cleaning, bed making, etc. are outstanding. I still refer to it frequently. This book is like a dear old friend and has influenced my life for 50 some odd years. It is one of the 9 or 10 most influential and treasured books that I own.

Written during the height of the best of Mid 20th Century consumer progress, this reprint is full of still-valid ideas, with the remainder for just looking in wonder at times gone by. In this book, Russel and Mary went to great lengths to explain everything that they believed was important to orchestrating successful home engineering and economics. It's fun to read, and the original illustrations are stylized and tongue-in-cheek. It's fantastic that this book has been reprinted, so its wisdom and guidelines can educate and possibly downscale some of the pseudo-modern pretentiousness of our contemporary lifestyles, via the true modernism of the past that is expressed in the Wright's text. For instance, the mainstream 21st Century over-stuffed attitudes of living in contrived luxury, look bloated and phoney compared to the Wrights' explanations of pared-down but comfortably designed home decorating and economics; i.e., think modern, lightweight, artistic, and easy to maintain -- not necessarily "cheap" or severely spare. Their message was to have fun, make your house look beautiful, and do it intelligently with as little extraneous pomp and flounce to clean as possible. Great advice for the 21st Century!

Some of the information is a bit dated (advice to use more disposable dishes?!), but by contrast some is ahead of its time (assuming that the husband will help around the house and the wife might actually work! outside the home!).

Considering that this book was written in 1950, the majority of the suggestions hold up extremely well and it's full of fascinating ideas about how to design, decorate and manage your home for minimal upkeep and maximum enjoyment/entertainment. Great to have on hand if you're doing any redesigning around the house and especially great if you're into the midcentury modern look.