More home ec stuff

[telophase]

I've mostly exhausted the textbooks available in the library here, so will have to decide if I want to ILL or not. But I've been reading a book about domestic advisers from the 19th century to the 20th. I left it at home, so I can't put the title here at the moment, but I wanted to say that it explicitly says something that I'd gathered from the textbooks: that many of the domestic advisers were on a campaign to assimilate immigrants Build the American Dream through interior decoration. As witnessed to by their desperate, long, lonely fight against the scourge of bric-a-brac. :)

Also something else I suspected: the difference between what the domestic advisers were saying and what actual, normal women were doing was fairly large. But that's not exactly news here - for every woman who manages to maintain the perfect Martha Stewart home, there are about a hundred who settle for cleaning up the cat barf and calling that their daily accomplishment.*





--

* I find that's quite enough housework for the day, thankyouverymuch. And that problem is partly solved by Sora acting much more like a dog in cleaning up after Nefer, if you get what I'm saying.

Comments

[golden-bastet.livejournal.com]

Actually, I missed just how you got interested in the home ec stuff. I'm of two minds about the subject: it can be very interesting stuff (especially cooking - I like to cook and eat!) and finding out how people used to do things (like the pound cake recipe which was more or less a pound of everything) can be a lot of fun. But I do bristle the second anyone implies that genetically I HAVE to like / do housekeeping.

I used to like going to different cities / countries and visiting mom-and-pop hardware stores, where you could dig up all sorts of cooking tools. Unfortunately, with the advent of big box stores and globalization, the small hardware stores aren't as easy to find anymore.

I had a book on medieval housekeeping (The Medieval Home Companion or something like that) that I bought some time back. I'd give you the title, but looking through my books I can't find it (it might be in storage). It's a little lacking in detail (well, the sources aren't that plentiful), but still interesting for all that.

If I do find it, I'll come back and let you know.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

If you check my home ec attack (http://telophase.livejournal.com/tag/home+ec+attack) tag, you can read back through them - basically I found a small collection of home ec textbooks in the library I work at and have been working my way through them. :D

I just found another one which is wonderful - from 1945, it's called Management in Homes and is a series of case studies of how college-level home ec classes went to various homes and talked with the homeowners and worked out ways to arrange furnishings and built furniture out of whatever free wood and orange crates they could get, in order to make the homeowners' lives a bit easier. None of this Pronouncement from On High stuff that most of the other domestic advice manuals give.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Going back (much) earlier, you might enjoy Rustic Adornments for Homes of Taste, which should be easy to find---originally published in 1857 and revised late in the 19c, it has been reprinted many times. Author is Shirley Hibbard. The well-managed family should have time for an apiary, an aquarium, a Wardian case, "floral ornaments" (flowers stuck on things!), and elaborate outdoor landscaping (rockery, fernery, outdoor aquarium...)!

We have a 1950's Popular Mechanics guide to making home more convenient and beautiful, mostly with Masonite. Unfortunately, if you ever have to live in a house that's been worked over by a Masonite-loving DIY family, the shortcomings are obvious...

If you are out of Home Ec, try some old Emily Post. The bits on managing with a part-time servant are especially good.