Rating: 
Summary: Home Comforts
Review: I've been reading all the reviews of this book and, although I am genuinely glad that so many people have benefited from her advice, I can't agree that this is a worthwhile reference book on housekeeping. I was SO excited about using this book but, as is mentioned by other reviewers, it's just not easy to use. So, as a reference book, it fails.I also have tried to use it as a bedtime reading book, going through a chapter at a time and felt, as others have, bogged down in her condescending and clipped tone. So, in a read-through, it fails again. But the biggest problem for me is that she has no credentials to back up any of her claims. For example, the book jacket claims that she provides environmentally friendly recipes for cleaning products, but when I looked them up they included such toxic ingredients as ammonia, chlorine bleach and powdered laundry detergent. These, of course, are not "green" ingredients. Also, she goes off on the family bed in the wierdest way on page 656 and gives completely falacious information about it in the process. What is this tangent doing in her book on housekeeping? So, although I think her topic is a timely one, as someone whose mother (and father) did teach her about housekeeping, I seriously question Mendelson's credibility. An authoritative tone does not make one an authority.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book on house keeping
Review: This book is a little heavy on the hygene stuff (thow away cheese with a little mold on it and don't put non food items in the kitchen sink) for my tastes, but it has a lot of good information in it.
Rating: 
Summary: All the things I knew I missed in schooling/life
Review: Ever have that feeling you missed a lot of crucial information or were slighted in the education of organizing your personal life?
While Franklin Covey planners give you a Context to plan your life, this book provides you knowledge to make useful choices about what Content to fill your life with.
In order to lay the groundwork for a more efficient life for my personal career aspirations and to effectively parent my 2 toddlers, I have been studying everything from Chronobiology to Benjamin Franklin's auto/biographies to Sleep Technology by William Dement to The Zone meal planning to Emotional Inteligence.
This is an excellent book covering everytopic from the obvious to legal formalities of having a house. I long felt I was missed a lot of things growing up in a first generation household. While I learned a lot from my Mom, I spent most of my adolescense rebelling against housework because my brothers were not similarly coached.
Well I married an American guy who has no preconceptions about who's JOB it is to do housework. However, we have different priorities about housework and now I'm realizing that having the knowledge to make efficient informed choices about how to and when to keep house would be useful.
My husband responds well to posted lists and if I post the list recommended by Mendelson I find I have more cooperation. In the past I would do the tasks and since they were so obvious, I never had a grasp of how many or what they were.
But the part I found most valuable is that I can go to any area of interest and read a little ie. our bathroom library....:) and feel like I at least know the beast I'm up against and so I have the peace of knowing what I've chosen to neglect and be comfortable with what the consequences are. I beleive like Mendelson in doing the minimum that's effective for my comfort level. Now that my life is more efficient and I have enlisted others, I can have the leisure time to choose to garden and find joy in making soap, flower arrangements as fun activities.
What I also found useful is the part about hiring out and the guidelines. A very useful saying I was once told by a President of a successful Japanese company was, "Know yourself, know your enemy and you can not lose"
I felt I knew myself, but didn't know my enemy which was how to order my life to be effective. Without a description of my enemy from an Obsessive compulsive perspective I was not fully equipped to make choices to make my life effective. Now I feel I have access to all the info. I slept through during middle school HomeEconomics courses.
Rating:
Summary: What else is there to say?
Review: This book teaches you everything you wanted to know about house keeping and everything you don't want to know also. If your Mom failed to pass on homekeeping knowledge like mine did, this is an excellent reference. Definitely a best buy. A++++
Rating:
Summary: The true comforts of home
Review: This is a wonderful book for anyone with serious goals involving house keeping. What may seem a little neurotic to some is great advice to someone else. Cheryl Mendelson helps to break down household chores so a little gets done each day and you are always ready for company. This book really helped me to put my household goals into action. I recommend it for anyone with deep ambitions in the household sciences.
Rating: 
Summary: A good reference book, though NOT to be taken too seriously!
Review: I like the structure of the book, and the framework of information provided. It is a very helpful resource for someone just beginning to set up housekeeping, or for one who never learned how in the first place. A word of caution though: This lady is seriously neurotic about how often to clean. Changing bedsheets TWICE per WEEK - give me a BREAK! She needs to get a life...
Rating:
Summary: very little comfort
Review: If you're looking for the ultimate guide to housekeeping, here it is. If you're a reforming slob, like I am, choose another book for advice. In the introduction, Mendelson's voice is kind and offers a wonderful connection between an orderly house and a peaceful house. Once into the book, however, her book turns technical and she keeps sliding in condescending remarks about those who aren't naturally neat and tidy as she is. You hear less about peace and self-satisfaction and more about perfection. That really turned me off. I quickly quit reading.
Rating:
Summary: Be it Ever So Humble There's No Place Like Home
Review: This book is a fine start for those who are serious about learning the arts of domestic order and harmony. This book will help you create comfort in your home. It isn't about decorating or food. It is about making sure that your home runs smoothly enough so that your needs are regularly met. -- No small task, in these times. -- You are quite likely to learn something within these pages that will improve the quality of your life while saving you time, money or both.
Rating:
Summary: What this book is, What it is NOT
Review: Reading this book is like eating pizza before bed: too much of it keeps me awake. It keeps me awake because it has SO MUCH housekeeping detail, I can never achieve a 10th of it. (But then her point is not that you should do everything she lists, just that see and understand the whole picture: from basic standards of cleanliness and order all the way to the most exacting standards. And by the way, she writes, a home must above all look and feel lived in. The perfectionist runs a cold and uncomfortable house.) Home Comforts is beautifully written. It is meticulously researched. And it is informed by the mind of an intelligent, organized and aesthetic woman who restores dignity and worth to housekeeping. But this is not a how-to book that persons in 2-career households can skim for shortcuts. It does include a wealth of timesaving information, but the information is set out in what is more of a philosophical discussion of the reasoning behind and worth of such practices. In fact, the author views with disdain the typical housekeeping article in newspapers or magazines, containing quick tips. She is far more interested in a leisurely ramble through housekeeping. And that's what this is: a leisurely ramble through the art, history and science of housekeeping. She elevates homemaking to high art. If you view your home life that way--and have a little time to read--you will enjoy this book. If you are too rushed to read a book like hers--which I very often am--you are missing the whole purpose of home. To slow down in it, live in it, savor it. I don't have time to do everything she lists, but as a rushed working mother it has changed my view on housework from necessary evil to art and science. Keeping a home is not some drudge task beneath busy persons, it's the essence of living well. That very message makes this an exceedingly worthwhile book.
Rating:
Summary: Homemaking For Today's Feminist
Review: I (like most of the postitive reviews) found this book incredibly well-reseached and suprisingly readable. As a twenty year old who is interested in learning the art of making a comfortable home for herself, I felt that this book offered me more than cleaning tips and how-to's; it gave me a justification for spending my time doing just that. Mendelson's introduction was, for me, an arguement for why people (women in particular) shouldn't reject homemaking as an oppresive, time-wasting drudgery. While not every household job is exciting, Mendelson makes an excellent arguement for everyone to make a clean, well-kept home for themselves without having to feel that they are simply playing the part of the dutiful homemaker.
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