66 of 75 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A great disappointment!, June 15, 2009
This review is from: Mrs. Meyer's Clean Home: No-Nonsense Advice that Will Inspire You to CLEAN like the DICKENS (Flexibound)
Having used many of Mrs. Meyer's cleaning products over the years and having found all of them both effective and pleasant to use, I looked forward to this book. In fact, I bought a copy for myself and one to give as a gift. And the online excerpts looked promising.
But, on receiving and reading the book itself --- what a keen disappointment! The book appears to have been self-published because the absence of professional editing is striking. The text is ponderously heavy on family lore and reminiscences, used in a way that frequently crowds out useful advice. The formatting uses sketches and enlarged graphics in place of substantive text. And the substance of the text itself is problematic.
There are some helpful lists given. But beyond those, there are concerns. Some of the advice is painfully obvious ("flush toilets after every use") and some just plain bad. We're told, for instance, to clean a refrigerator when it begins to smell (!) and then to "unplug it and take everything out." This is poor household management. A better, less time-consuming practice is to clean a shelf a week: move everything to one side and clean the empty side with a cloth wrung out of a solution of two tablespoons baking soda to one gallon of hot water. Dry the cleaned side, move things to the clean surface and clean the other side, sorting outdated items as you go. This piecemeal cleaning, done at least once a week, completely avoids the crisis mode of Mrs. Meyer's choice.
More troubling are the lapses in taste that even cross the boundary into vulgarity. Beyond the admonition about flushing every time there is, for one example, her four-year-old's graphic description of a stray cat giving birth (repeated twice in case you weren't sufficiently grossed out the first time). This kind of story does not improve anyone's housekeeping skills.
Women in the twenty-first century don't want to choose between having a home and pursuing a career. They want both. But there is a disconnect between this generation of new homemakers and their mothers and even their grandmothers, neither of whom may have been homemakers themselves. Therefore the popularity of the many books on home management now available. Martha Stewart's book Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook: the Essential Guide to Caring for Everything in Your Home is wonderful, full of useful, detailed information, helpfully indexed. Cheryl Mendelsohn's Home Comforts is encyclopedic and good reading besides. And neither of these writers peppers her prose with "Geez," as Meyer frequently does.
A personal favorite of mine is Karen Logan's Clean House, Clean Planet, in which Logan includes many family stories and references without once lapsing into Meyer's poor taste. Logan's book also contains her personal recipes for safe, natural cleaning solutions, several of which I have used successfully for years.
In addition to these three, an interested reader can find literally dozens of other choices. I only wish Mrs. Meyer had created a truly valuable addition to the list!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cleaning CAN be Fun!, February 21, 2009
This review is from: Mrs. Meyer's Clean Home: No-Nonsense Advice that Will Inspire You to CLEAN like the DICKENS (Flexibound)
To someone who is learning how to keep house for the first time on their own, this book is a godsend! Since moving into my own place, I've been learning that cleaning the house is NOT an easy task but it's something that must be done. This book will help out the complete novice who's never had to clean a day in their life to the well seasoned housekeeper who knows all the little tricks of the trade. The book tackles each room in the house in their own chapter. Throughout that chapter, the reader learns how to maintain everything in the room from shelves to the ceiling, under the bed to the shower curtains, practically everything you could imagine. There's little tips and tricks throughout the book that will grab your attention and make you want to try them out immediately. Each chapter starts off with a toolbox list of the things you will need to clean each particular room. Pretty much everything is on grounds for cleaning down to your car and driveway and your pets as well. It's written in an informative yet entertaining style. Even those who are neat freaks and clean every day will get a kick out of this book. Really there's no excuse for you to say you don't have time or don't know how to clean after reading this book. This is a book that every home should have a copy of. Like the last page of the book says: "A Clean Home is a Happy Home!"
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Invaluable Resource For A Clean, Organized Home, March 15, 2009
This review is from: Mrs. Meyer's Clean Home: No-Nonsense Advice that Will Inspire You to CLEAN like the DICKENS (Flexibound)
This book is going to be a new automatic housewarming gift from me. Mrs. Meyer packs every page with valuable information, motivation, funny anecdotes, and handy tips. Somehow, even in the litany of cleaning tasks she teaches the reader to tackle, she doesn't make it seem like a daunting task to have a clean, pleasant home that makes you and your family feel happy. It helps that she's practical to the utmost. She raised nine children, and her standard of clean was not "immaculate," but rather, "livable." If you tend to get bogged down in trying to make everything perfectly clean, Mrs. Meyer will not only help you focus on organizing your attempts at cleaning and on doing something instead of nothing, she gives you the tools you need to do so. The book is organized by room (or area) of the house/yard, and includes a sample schedule of daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal cleaning tasks. Attempting to follow this schedule is strangely freeing. Even if we miss a day's tasks, there's a make-up/rest day built in, and Mrs. Meyer is encouraging and inspiring. There is no sense that a level of perfection can be reached while people are actually living in and enjoying the home, but she makes the reader feel inspired to at least try. And those attempts make visible improvements. An "emergency" guide for making the house seem clean when company is on the way is as indispensable as the rest of the book. Mrs. Meyer is also frugal and environmentally conscious, so her cleaning methods are focused on that angle, which I thought was fantastic. Even better, these inexpensive, non-hazardous methods actually work, often better than the purchased harsh chemicals. I highly recommend this book to anyone who doesn't have a staff to keep the house clean and organized.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
