10,001 Hints And Tips For The Home

Rating:
Summary: Stupid.
Review: ...If you like cutesy decorating ideas, you might like this book. If you're looking for practical household tips, there's nothing beyond the obvious and some tips are very impractical. For example, they advise you to keep candles in the refrigerator so you can find them easily in a power outage. I don't know about you, but in a power outage, the last thing I want to do is open the refrigerator and spoil my food. The book tries to cover everything under the sun and, as a result, isn't really good for anything.

Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Book!
Review: Can a book about hints and tips for the home be beautiful? Indeed it can. And this one sure is. It is a joy to window shop through the pages of this lovely and beautifully designed book that will surely have something for everyone. I've only gone through the first few chapters -- about housekeeping -- and I've already written about 3 or 4 index cards worth of notes. Believe me, I'm not exactly the Happy Homemaker but I'm trying to mend my ways. And this book is not merely about housekeeping. In addition to housekeeping and house cleaning, the author, Cassandra Kent, has chapters about stain removal, clothes and laundry, care and repair, home improvements, home maintenance, food and drink and health and safety. This book is an excellent addition to anyone's household and it truly does have an abundance of useful, helpful and, hopefully, new information for those of us who are tired of being lousy housekeepers! The book itself is so lovely to look at, with a beautiful, user-friendly, easy-on-the-eyes layout, that even the grumpiest of housekeepers will find hours of pleasure from thumbing through the thousands and thousand of useful tips and hints. Good luck to all of you who, like me, are attempting to become reformed slobs! Already my home looks better. I now can say I no longer have a sloppy and cluttered home -- I have neat and clean clutter!

Rating:
Summary: For True Beginners
Review: I don't consider myself a home expert but may reconsider after reading this book. There was very little that was new to me and much of it was common sense. When I did come across something new, (home repairs for example) there wasn't enough detailed information. I needed to consult other resources. I think the book tries to be everything to everyone. I much prefer Hints from Heloise, Decorating for Dummies and, the Readers Digest repair books.

Rating:
Summary: Outdated
Review: I just realized that the Cassandra Kent book that I reviewed was the OLD version of Hints and Tips (copyright 1996). I thought I had the "10,001" version (the covers are identical) but it turns out I had the older version of the book. There seem to be many more chapters in the new version (such as Decorating and Gardening, which are not in the previous version). I wish I had seen the new version, which looks great, but I don't recall seeing it at the bookstore. I only bought this book a month ago, but I'm truly satisfied with the version I have. It's a lovely book and I still recommend the old version if you want to save a few dollars.

Rating:
Summary: Outdated
Review: This book contains some rather outdated concepts. Such as advising you to store garlic in oil. This has long been warned as dangerous due to potentital food poisoning, yet the book does not include any caution about this practice. The book also tells you to extract egg whites from passing the egg from one shell to another, which again is not an adviseable method (I checked my Better Homes & Gardens book and Cook's Illustrated).

The index of this book is wrong a lot of the times.

Rating:
Summary: 10,001 HInts and Tips for the Home
Review: What a wonderfully interesting, anecdotally apt, and fun book to learn the "art" of running, repairing, staying on top of, and enjoying your house.