How to Avoid Housework: Tips, Hints, and Secrets on How to Have a Spotless Home

by Paula Jhung

Overview

Household tips by a popular columnist include fast tidy jobs for unexpected visitors, organizing clutter, creating a self-maintained kitchen, coping with mess-makers, and keeping the bathroom clean.

If you think it’s not possible to have a virtually self-cleaning home—think again! America’s self-proclaimed “#1 Avoidance Expert” tells all in this often hilarious, always smart, and eminently practical compendium of tips, hints, and secrets to maintaining a spotless home by barely lifting a finger. Would you rather arrange flowers and light candles than dust the table they sit upon? Would you rather sweep the dust under the rug than vacuum it? Here at last, in this terrific “antihousework” bible, Paula Jhung blends artful advice, a soupcon of illusion, and a bucketful of wit to whip up super solutions for the “I Hate to Housekeep” brigade. Sweeping (quickly) through every room in the house, Jhung gives you the dirt.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439146064
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	02/13/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	226
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Paula Jhung is the author of Cleaning and the Meaning of Life and Guests without Grief and coauthor of Entertaining at Home. A regular contributor to Family Circle, her articles have appeared in dozens of publications including House Beautiful, Bridal Guide, Woman’s World, and Cosmopolitan. She is an interior designer who owns CleanDesign, a low-maintenance, high-comfort decorating service. Visit Paula at PaulaJhung.com.

Editorial Reviews

Although it doesn't promise to eliminate housecleaning altogether, this breezy, upbeat book will gladden slatterns everywhere. Blithe I-hate-housework quotes decorate the margins (e.g., Kay Mosure's quip, ``Why is there a permanent press setting on most irons?''), but the author, an interior designer as well as a newspaper and magazine columnist, uses more than humor to rally the troops. Some of the good advice is obvious (throw things away); some of it unlikely (if you have a pet that sheds, train it to live outdoors). Most is specific and well-reasoned: stencil, don't wallpaper, a steamy, heavily used bathroom because wallpaper paste can't withstand high humidity; one-step floor-cleaning products may loosen dirt but will trap it in the finish, so dampen a mop with diluted white vinegar instead. Realistically, if sexistly, addressing women, Jhung urges her audience to hire housekeepers and to draft husbands and children in the war against dirt and detritus-the best way to avoid housework, as always, is to get someone else to do it. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

" Anticleaning" columnist Jhung blames innate messiness for her aversion to housework. A go-getter as well as an inspired loafer, she studied interior design with an eye to making decor decisions that are eye-catching and conducive to a low-maintenance cleaning regimen. She wants to develop a self-cleaning house, and although that remains only a dream, the wisdom amassed in pursuit of it, if heeded, can help make cleaning much easier. Every housework how-to advises on hard-to-clean areas and the various nauseating buildups that cleaning preparations spawn, but Jhung also includes tips on such things as choosing "die-hard" houseplants: "A few lush, healthy houseplants can bring a room to life or screen a mess, and may even clear the air of household pollution." This is down-to-earth advice on keeping accumulating flecks of it from dominating your living space.

Mike Tribby