Home Comforts
 |
| RetroRenovation.com |
A Prayer for a Little Home
God, send us a little home
God, send us a little home
to come back to when we roam.
Wooden floors and fluted tiles,
wide windows, a view for miles.
Red firelight and deep chairs, small white beds upstairs.
Great talk in little nooks, soft colors, rows of books.
One picture on each wall, not so many things at all.
God, send us a little ground, tall trees stand ’round.
Homely flowers in fertile sod, overhead, thy stars, O God.
God bless thee when winds blow, Our home and all we know. ~Florence Bone
I moved into a cluttered home (and brought lots with me) which I wrote
about here: http://keeping-house.blogspot.com/2011/04/learning-to-love-small-house.html. I’ve been moving the clutter out for 9 years
now. Now the layer that is being removed
is the baby-stage equipment, toys and clothes.
But I still need encouragement and know-how, and Cheryl Mendelson has
helped me run my home better.
Inspiring Quotes from
Home Comforts: The Art & Science
of Keeping House
Cheryl Mendelson, in Home
Comforts, states: “…people are led into the error of playing house instead of keeping house by a genuine desire for a
home and its comforts. Nostalgia means, literally, homesickness.
What really does work to
increase the feeling of having a home and its comforts is housekeeping. Housekeeping creates cleanliness, order,
regularity, beauty, the conditions for health and safety, and a good place to
do and feel all the things you wish and need to do and feel in your home. …it is your housekeeping that makes your
home alive…a vital place…where you can be more yourself than you can be
anywhere else.
Despite these rewards,
American housekeeping and home life are in a state of decline. Comfort and
engagement at home have diminished to the point that even simple cleanliness
and decent meals – let alone any deeper satisfactions – are no longer taken for
granted. Dirt, dust and disorder are more common…
Bedding decreases in
refinement, freshness, and comfort, even as sales of linens, pillows, and
comforters increase. It is not in goods that the contemporary
household is poor, but in comfort and care.
Many people lead deprived lives in houses filled with
material luxury.
As people turn more to
outside institutions to have their needs met (for food, comfort, clean laundry,
relaxation, entertainment, society, rest), domestic skills …further diminish,
in turn decreasing the chance that people’s homes can satisfy their needs.
The
result is far too many people who long for home even though they seem to have
one."
Her Solution
"…What a traditional woman
did that made her home warm and alive was not dusting and laundry… Her real
secret was that she identified herself with her home… Her affection was in the
soft sofa cushions, clean linens, and good meals; her memory in well-stocked
storeroom cabinets and the pantry; her intelligence in the order and
healthfulness of her home; her good humor in its light and air…
You can enjoy keeping house.
No one is too superior or intelligent to care for hearth and home… Each of its
regular routines brings satisfaction when it is completed. These routines echo
the rhythm of life, and the rhythm of the body. You get satisfaction not only
from the sense of order, cleanliness, freshness, peace, and plenty restored,
but from knowing you and those you care about are going to enjoy these
benefits.
Warmhearted, reasonably
organized people…tend to keep well-functioning, cheerful, and welcoming homes,
while people who live from one crisis to the next have homes filled with crises
and chaos.
All of us who really do enjoy living in a
well-kept home can come to enjoy the rituals of its care. The act of taking care of our homes brings
comfort and consolation…”
Comments
Post a Comment