Hint, Hint

I recently found this little book at a thrift store and brought it home for perusal.  I'm drawn to books, recipes and magazines that give me a glimpse into the history of home making.  I wanted to share this gem because it has been so validating to read.  Heloise has a straightforward manner and a friendly voice, and I am enamored of the idea of American housewives taking their work in their homes very seriously.  I love that she tells them they don't have to sweep under the beds everyday and how to scrub the tub with your broom (which also cleans the broom).

Homemaking seems to be so different anymore.  There are those women who keep immaculate homes, I've known a few, and there are those who end up on Clean House, with all of us gawking at their piles of possessions.  Most of us fall somewhere between the extremes and hope that the day the neighbors drop in coincides with the day we just cleaned and vacuumed the living room.  Or there are those convenient front rooms with the couch for show and a wall between drop-ins and the real family living. I don't have one of those.  If you come to my front door, you can see how many dishes are in my sink.  You can see that my youngest son has built another structure from household odds and ends.  His favorite materials are boxes and sticks. 

With a household our size, there is always something in transition.  I overheard a teenage boy (the youngest in his family) say to my oldest son, "Doesn't this place ever get cleaned?" My son's perfect answer was, "Yeah, all the time."  Illustrative of the cleaning and messing process that is always carried on here. Not a home with the nation's standard 1.5 children, we have such an interesting variety of messes.  We have the boxes and sticks, we have the teenage: clothes-on-the-floor is one of my inalienable rights, and I have a smattering of children who are very clean in between.  I have one who loves to invent things, and needs many items about him in order to think of how they might come together to solve the worlds ills.  I am a tosser, my husband a collector.  Except when it comes to books, then we both have the collecting sickness.  You get the idea.  Anytime you combine so many people with so many ideas, dreams and hopes in one place, it can't be sterile.  Yet, I do strive for clean.  It does elude me.  Oh well, Heloise might have some pointers.  At the very least, this book has made me smile enjoying the nostalgia of a time when a man wrote in about making a mop from his wife's stockings. :) What a guy!

Jenny