Mary’s Household Tips & Tricks: Your Guide to Happiness in the Home

Berry (Mary Berry’s Quick Cooking), a former judge on The Great British Baking Show, delivers a comprehensive and practical housekeeping guide directed toward “helping you with life and guiding you through chores,” not “creating more work, or telling you what you should do.” She starts in “the heart of the house,” the kitchen, where she covers food storage, optimal shelf space use, and knowing what not to put in the dishwasher. She moves on to keeping one’s home in a state of “spit and polish,” discussing essential cleaning products (with clever tips on using lemons to remove cloudy stains from glass and chrome), avoiding damage to painted walls and wood furniture during cleaning, and eliminating black mold in the bathroom. Berry then dispenses “laundry and wardrobe wisdom,” coming out as a skeptic of “dry clean only” labels, disclosing, “I often [machine] wash so-called precious fabrics with great success”; she challenges like-minded readers, “Why not be brave and have a go?” After a brisk jaunt through the garden, Berry wraps up by explaining how to be the perfect host. With gorgeous color photos throughout, this book will draw the many fans of Berry’s cooking into her domestic-goddess life, offering eminently useful advice for experienced homemakers and domestic neophytes alike. (Apr.)