Keeping the House

Keeping the House
Author: Ellen Baker
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2007-07-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1588366294

Set in the conformist 1950s and reaching back to span two world wars, Ellen Baker’ s superb novel is the story of a newlywed who falls in love with a grand abandoned house and begins to unravel dark secrets woven through the generations of a family. Like Whitney Otto’s How to Make an American Quilt in its intimate portrayal of women’ s lives, and reminiscent of novels by Elizabeth Berg and Anne Tyler, Keeping the House is a rich tapestry of a novel that introduces a wonderful new fiction writer. When Dolly Magnuson moves to Pine Rapids, Wisconsin, in 1950, she discovers all too soon that making marriage work is harder than it looks in the pages of the Ladies’ Home Journal. Dolly tries to adapt to her new life by keeping the house, supporting her husband’s career, and fretting about dinner menus. She even gives up her dream of flying an airplane, trying instead to fit in at the stuffy Ladies Aid quilting circle. Soon, though, her loneliness and restless imagination are seized by the vacant house on the hill. As Dolly’s life and marriage become increasingly difficult, she begins to lose herself in piecing together the story of three generations of Mickelson men and women: Wilma Mickelson, who came to Pine Rapids as a new bride in 1896 and fell in love with a man who was not her husband; her oldest son, Jack, who fought as a Marine in the trenches of World War I; and Jack’s son, JJ, a troubled veteran of World War II, who returns home to discover Dolly in his grandparents’ house. As the crisis in Dolly’s marriage escalates, she not only escapes into JJ’s stories of his family’s past but finds in them parallels to her own life. As Keeping the House moves back and forth in time, it eloquently explores themes of wartime heroism and passionate love, of the struggles of men’s struggles with fatherhood and war and of women’s conflicts with issues of conformity, identity, forbidden dreams, and love. Beautifully written and atmospheric, Keeping the House illuminates the courage it takes to shape and reshape a life, and the difficulty of ever knowing the truth about another person’s desires. Keeping the House is an unforgettable novel about small-town life and big matters of the heart.

Keeping the House

Keeping the House
Author: Tice Cin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2021-09-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781913505080

From a bewitching new voice, a story of a young woman coming into her own

Home Comforts

Home Comforts
Author: Cheryl Mendelson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 900
Release: 2005-05-17
Genre: House & Home
ISBN: 0743272862

A classic bestselling resource for every household, Home Comforts helps you manage everyday chores, find creative solutions to domestic dilemmas, and enhance the experience of life at home. “Home Comforts is to the house what Joy of Cooking is to food.” —USA TODAY Home Comforts is an engaging and comprehensive book about housekeeping. It is a lively and readable guide for both beginners and experts in all the domestic arts. From keeping surfaces free of germs, watering plants, removing stains, folding a fitted sheet, cleaning china, tuning a piano, lighting a fire, setting the dining room table—this guide covers everything that people might want to do for themselves in their homes. Further topics include: making up a bed with hospital corners, expert recommendations for safe food storage, reading care labels (and sometimes carefully disregarding them), keeping your home free of dust mites and other allergens, this is a practical, good-humored, philosophical guidebook to the art and science of household management.

How to Keep House While Drowning

How to Keep House While Drowning
Author: KC Davis
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2022-04-26
Genre: House & Home
ISBN: 166800285X

An NPR Best Book of 2022 USA TODAY Bestseller This revolutionary approach to cleaning and organizing helps free you from feeling ashamed or overwhelmed by a messy home. If you’re struggling to stay on top of your to-do list, you probably have a good reason: anxiety, fatigue, depression, ADHD, or lack of support. For therapist KC Davis, the birth of her second child triggered a stress-mess cycle. The more behind she felt, the less motivated she was to start. She didn’t fold a single piece of laundry for seven months. One life-changing realization restored her sanity—and the functionality of her home: You don’t work for your home; your home works for you. In other words, messiness is not a moral failing. A new sense of calm washed over her as she let go of the shame-based messaging that interpreted a pile of dirty laundry as “I can never keep up” and a chaotic kitchen as “I’m a bad mother.” Instead, she looked at unwashed clothes and thought, “I am alive,” and at stacks of dishes and thought, “I cooked my family dinner three nights in a row.” Building on this foundation of self-compassion, KC devised the powerful practical approach that has exploded in popularity through her TikTok account, @domesticblisters. The secret is to simplify your to-do list and to find creative workarounds that accommodate your limited time and energy. In this book, you’ll learn exactly how to customize your cleaning strategy and rebuild your relationship with your home, including: -How to see chores as kindnesses to your future self, not as a reflection of your worth -How to start by setting priorities -How to stagger tasks so you won’t procrastinate -How to clean in quick bursts within your existing daily routine -How to use creative shortcuts to transform a room from messy to functional With KC’s help, your home will feel like a sanctuary again. It will become a place to rest, even when things aren’t finished. You will move with ease, and peace and calm will edge out guilt, self-criticism, and endless checklists. They have no place here.

Keeping House

Keeping House
Author: Emma Blomfield
Publisher: Hardie Grant Publishing
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2019-03-01
Genre: House & Home
ISBN: 1743586078

We all desire a space that feels authentically our own: somewhere we can curl up with a cup of tea or host a dinner party for our favourite people.

Many of us see homemaking as something we will do ‘one day’ – perhaps when we are no longer renting or when we have a larger budget. But interior decorator Emma Blomfield can help you start making the most of what you’ve got right now. Emma shares her tips on how to style and maintain every room in your house to achieve a state of meaningful living, and how to decorate and connect with guests through beautiful events.

House

House
Author: Frank E. Peretti
Publisher: Thomas Nelson Inc
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2008-08-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1595543627

Two stranded couples find shelter in an inn but find themselves trapped in a game with rules setting up a life-or-death situation.

Keeping House

Keeping House
Author: Margaret Kim Peterson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2010-12-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1118040902

Keeping House is a wide-ranging and witty exploration of the spiritual gifts that are gained when we take the time to care for hearth and home. With a fresh perspective, mother, wife, and teacher Margaret Kim Peterson examines the activities and attitudes of keeping house and making a home. Debunking the commonly held notion that keeping house is a waste of time or at best a hobby, Peterson uncovers the broader cultural and theological factors that make housekeeping an interesting and worthwhile discipline. She reveals how the seemingly ordinary tasks of folding laundry, buying groceries, cooking, making beds, and offering hospitality can be seen as spiritual practices that embody and express concrete and positive ways of living out Christian faith in relationship to others at home, in the church and in the world.

Keeping House

Keeping House
Author: Clara Sereni
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2005-04-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780791464793

Food and its preparation play an integral role in this novel of a young Italian woman struggling to find her own identity in a family of strong personalities and colorful figures.

Keeping Their Place

Keeping Their Place
Author: Pamela A Sambrook
Publisher: The History Press
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2005-07-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0752494686

In 1851 there were over a million servants in Britain. This book reveals first-hand tales of put-upon servants, who often had to rise hours before dawn to lay fires, heat water and prepare meals for their employers, and then work into the small hours. Yet there are also heart-warming stories of personal devotion, and reward, and of how the servants enjoyed themselves in their time off. There are moments of great poignancy as well as hilarity: a steward's dawning realisation that the housekeeper he befriended is a thief; a young footman chasing a melon as it rolls through a castle's corridors into the moat; the smart manservant weeping at the station as he bids farewell to his mother. This was an era when footmen were paid extra for being six foot or over, and female servants had to wear black bonnets to church. Drawing on letters, diaries, and autobiographies "Keeping Their Place" provides a vivid insight into the day-by-day lives of country house servants between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.

Keeping House

Keeping House
Author: Margaret Mahy
Publisher:
Total Pages: 24
Release: 1991
Genre: Home economics
ISBN: 9780140543681

Ashamed to let the housekeeper see how untidy her house has become, Lizzie Firkin cleans it herself.