On Dust Mites, Frugality, and Keeping It Nice

Yesterday, at a library book sale, I picked up Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, by Cheryl Mendelson, for fifty cents. Believe me when I say that that was the best fifty cents I've spent in years. I've long suspected that an orderly home and frugality go hand in hand. Ordinarily, I am a tidy person, but there have been periods in my life when work and school have hindered my ability to keep chaos at bay. During those times I spend freely, making purchases of convenience rather than need. How many times have I eaten in a restaurant, not because I wanted someone to cook for me, but because the fridge was empty or contained odds and ends (like frozen waffles and peas) that only my husband would consider combining into a meal? Similarly, when we moved last summer, I found enough picture-hanging kits to start my own museum of fine art. If our basement had been organized, I would have been able to find what I needed instead of running to the hardware store every time I wanted to hang something.

Home Comforts is not only an in-depth guide to cleaning (there's actually a schedule for what you need to clean daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally, semiannually and annually), it is also a resource for caring for your possessions—there's a entire chapter on how to mend books. "Keep it nice" is one of my father's frequent admonitions, and he's right. My parents do not have a lot, but what they do have, they treat gently. When I was in junior high, they bought an inexpensive living room set that has never been reupholstered and that they still use to this day. My father can get ten or more years out of a flannel shirt. A few months ago, he gave me a pair of hunting socks that he's had since the 70s. We live in a throw-away society, where everything from cars to furniture to appliances has a shorter and shorter life, but that doesn't mean we have to take part. My sister told me about a book she'd read by a monk who said that we should make everything we own last more than one lifetime. That seems like a good rule of thumb.

Another important lesson that I'll keep in mind when we get our house and furnish it: Mendelson insists that a homey home has little to do with interior decorating and everything to do with good housekeeping. In other words, filling your rooms with antique milk bottles and distressed furniture and baskets and wreaths will not make it comfortable. All you've created is a stage-set. A friend once said, "Distressed furniture looks like furniture that belongs to people who do not know how to treat their furniture." Mendelson suggests that, increasingly, Americans are "led into the error of playing house instead of keeping house." We long for a true home, but not knowing what that means anymore, let alone how to create it, we simply throw money away amassing more and more belongings that never really satisfy our deepest desires.

Home Comforts would make an excellent bridal shower, wedding, or house-warming gift.