Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook: The Essential Guide to Caring for Everything in Your Home

Super sturdy! This book is huge I wasn’t expecting 700+ pages but it’s great. It has literally anything you could think of cleaning wise inside!

`Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook' might be entitled `A Guide to Living Well'. It is authored by the magazine staff of Martha Stewart Omnimedia Incorporated, and edited by Stewart herself, is the second major book, to come from Miss Martha and Company since she got out of the slammer, the first being her excellent `Baking Handbook'. While much material in the book is probably reprinted from the magazine, the book is a far superior repository than 15 years worth of `Martha Stewart Living', since, like her cookbooks, it collects and organizes all the material in a far more useable form. The first thing I noticed about the book is that it deals with more than simple cleaning and even more than keeping organized. The book is literally a guideline for the design of the most important rooms in the house in order that keeping them clean and organized is a manageable task. Its no surprise that Martha's first subject is the kitchen, as that is the venue for much of her magazine's other concerns. As an example of material for home design, the kitchen chapter includes sidebars on all the different kitchen counter materials with their pros, cons, cleaning, and repair instructions. A similar section follows this on the materials and designs of kitchen sinks, sink fixtures, and major kitchen appliances. As you browse through the book, one gets the feeling that simply no subject has been overlooked. One may wonder whether any one person would use as much as 1/10 of the material in the book. But, as someone who considers a book valuable if it has but one important idea, Martha's book far exceeds my needs for a book to be valuable. My favorite item is the instruction on how to fold a fitted sheet. I have seen Martha do it on TV at least three times, and I simply can never remember how it's done when I actually get one in hand. Her authority on most matters is also reassuring. When Martha tells me to clean my dryer lint trap after every load, and gives good reasons, I'm ready to fall in line. All this means that this is a perfect reference book. One problem with having the book is to take some simple task for granted and proceed on your own without consulting the book. An example is the task of scrubbing surfaces, which is a much differen than simply wiping clean of loose dirt. My instincts when I'm about to clean a difficult surface is to simply go to the store and look for the strongest cleaner I can find which seems remotely applicable to the surface. Martha advises exactly the opposite, and recommends a cautious approach, starting with the mildest cleaners. She even points out that before beginning, one must take into consideration that the surface you are about to attack may not even be suitable to standing up to a lot of water, which is a typical aspect of `scrubbing'. I'm still finding things I needed (at least once in my life) but didn't now until now. I've gone through life seeing only twin, standard, queen, and king sized beds, and felt at a loss when I had to find a mattress smaller than twin. It turns out that there are actually nine (9) `U.S. Standard Sizes' for bed linens, with at least two smaller than the standard twin. Another major surprise was the amount of space in the book dedicated to cleaning, organizing, and maintaining outdoor spaces. While much of this tends to border on the subject of landscaping, it all fits into the overall scheme of the book and it's objective to cover simply everything. Since Ms. Martha is known to have several dogs and cats, it was not surprising to find much on the care and comfort of both species, although there is nothing I could find regarding either pet fish, pet birds, aquariums or birdcages. This may be the sole oversight. I was delighted to find even instructions on how to correctly store vinyl records, with the surprising instruction to remove the plastic outer wrapping. I have been saving this plastic on my vinyl dating back to records acquired almost 40 years ago. I could find nothing under `allergens'; however there was much under the very similar topic of `biological pollutants'. The most useful advice is the guidelines for when to do weekly, monthly, seasonal, and yearly tasks. On the other hand, these schedules also appear to be the impractical for the average working adult living alone or with only a working spouse. Those who are retired or who have one or more able adolescents in the house will probably be able to handle much of these things. The first advice in the book is `Six things to do every day!'. Since I'm retired, I have ample time to do all these things; except that I am in love with `living in the moment', and having imposed on me the tasks of making a bed, tidying up every time I leave a room, and sweeping the kitchen floor every day may seem to be a bit much. But then, the trick is to make these part of your routine, so that they become second nature, a matter of habit, and no longer a distraction. Still, there are items on these lists that may be excessively fussy for many people. One example is the advice to dust the top of books on a weekly basis. Now I suspect Miss Martha may do that in some of her rooms, but if, like me, she has a library of over 1000 volumes, she does NOT dust the tops of all THOSE books. In fact, I do virtually none of the weekly tasks more often than once every two weeks, and feel none the grimier for that fact. Martha shares with Julia Child the fact that it is her books and not her TV presence which is her greatest work.

This is a great book that tells everything need need about caring for your home. Perhaps the only downside is that it is very thick (700+) pages, and thus not something you just carry around with you. Otherwise it exceeded my expectations. Every page has good, helpful content that is still relevant after 20 years. The content is broken into bitesize articles, so you don't feel like you are reading a huge book. It comes with cleaning checklists and even a moving checklist.

If it weren't so expensive, I'd give it to every kid graduating high school, or every couple getting married. So much information. Do I realty need to know ALL about sheets? Probably not, but I found it interesting! It's a great resource book. This is my second one. I gave the other to my son.

Had no problem with delivery. The box was in tact, however. The ziplock bag that the book came in to protect even further had split open on the side. It looks as though liquid soap (I did not order liquid soap) had leaked into the bag, covering the entire book. THIS HAD TO HAVE LEAKED INTO THE ZIPLOCK BEFORE BEING PUT IN THE BOX AND IT WAS SHIPPED ANYWAY. Thank goodness the soap only made contact with a few paper pages. The paper is of good quality so it was able to take me washing it off. Martha Stewart takes great care in producing high quality books. No other book could have with stood these elements. Would have given five stars if not for this. The book now smells pretty good though! Keeping the book despite an inadequate quality check.

In her prologue, Martha discusses her interest and admiration for old books on household management from several countries. Lo and behold, Martha has created this country's home management encyclopedia herself. All joking aside (SNL sketches, anyone?), you gotta hand it to her: she has indeed created this country and this generation's home care encyclopedia. As a city girl who suddenly found herself in a suburban house with a family to care for, I needed a clue about how I could run my home (instead of it running me). I poured over this book. It doesn't go into deep detail on anything, but that is its strength. It is comprehensive, modern and useful. I was anticipating uptight and obsolete practices. (Well ok, just skip the page on devoting a closet to roll and store your antique linens.) Here are just a few sample topics I picked randomly: sealing your limestone floors, different types of heating systems and their care, recommended quantities of linens, seasonal cleaning and maintenance schedules, setting up a WiFi network, take care of cut flowers, fix squeaky stairs, babyproof a home, the different quilting approaches for comforters and which will keep the feathers from migrating to the edges, outfitting a fireplace, different sheet materials and their qualities, how to make your home more energy efficient. It is a great resource for anyone with a house, an apartment, or any space of their own to maintain.

Martha Stewart's massive (744 pages) "Homekeeping" book is fantastic with answers to just about any question any young or old homekeeper may have. It is divided up into seven sections, starting with how to use the book and what basic cleaning products you should have. The book progresses through a room to room look at the house and at how to clean every room, comfort and safety in your house, moving and a material guide.

Comprehensive and a great gift for newlyweds who have just purchased their own home.

Perfect

Parece usado pues el libro no venía sellado y trae un forro plástico que es parte de la cubierta que venía maltratado de las orillas. Por dentro si está impecable y la información es buenísima! Una guía completa para el mantenimiento del hogar.

My daughter and son are flicking through this book. I love it because it is easy to understand, straight facts and easy to follow solutions. The index helps you find exactly what you want to deal with in the house. I have not had the opportunity to check out all the advise for every room in my house. But so far, the answers/tips I am looking for, I have found and am well pleased! Would have been even better if there was a website to ask questions strictly related to this book. That's the only suggestion I have to improve on such a good how-to-book.