cover image Spring Cleaning: The Spirit of Keeping Home

Spring Cleaning: The Spirit of Keeping Home

Monica Nassif. Chronicle Books, $16.95 (84pp) ISBN 978-0-8118-3985-3

Nassir gives housework's homely image a makeover in this pretty little guide to sweeping, mopping and de-junking in the grand tradition of the spring clean. Acknowledging that few people have time for the full-blown, traditional affair, in which everything in sight gets scrubbed and polished, Nassir encourages her readers to approach cleaning as a ritual, one task at a time, and to look at""caring for your home as an extension of caring for yourself."" She offers numerous suggestions on soundtracks (how about Toscas, featuring Maria Callas, for cleaning the basement?); proper dress (a gardener's apron has handy pockets); good tools (galvanized steel buckets trump plastic models for sturdiness and style); and, of course, cleaning strategies (salt and vinegar paste polishes brass, while black tea diluted in water does a good job on wood floors). As she moves through particular areas of the house, Nassir gives task-by-task guidelines complete with tool lists, time estimates and suggestions for celebrating a""job well done."" From porches to ovens to drawers to dryer ducts, Nassir, who founded a fancy cleanser company""devoted to making household chores more enjoyable,"" is a knowledgeable guide. One may wonder, though, whether the book is as useful as it is cute--the problem with cleaning for most isn't that they don't know how to do it, it's that they don't really want to. 25 four-color photographs.