Guide to Successful Homemaking

I was at my DH's grandma's birthday party at a farm waaay out in the country about an hour and a half from where we live. His Grandma is old school. She is a very tough farm lady who has pretty much done nothing but work her whole life, and do crafty things and cook for fun.

I can't imagine what it must be like to have her as a mother-in-law, because even as a grandmother-in-law she is formidable. She is the sweetest lady you'll ever meet, but her standards are (and this is an understatement) very high for food, and homemaking in general.

While I was at her house today a stack of books caught my eye as I was sitting the La-z-boy and feigning interest in basketball. One of the books said,
How to arrange flowers which is the book I meant to look at.

But

Directly underneath it was a book that said something like
Good Houskeeping's Guide to Good Homemaking
I can't remember exactly what the title was, but you get the point.

I picked it up because I thought it would be charmingly antiquated. Some of it was startingly out of date: Like the part where it had pictures of each bug you might find in your house and suggested that you spray down your house with DDT at the first sign of them. Or, that perhaps if you see bugs in stored clothing, you should spray the clothing with DDT and then store them again.

And by the way a big thank you to the U.S. government for limiting the use of DDT in the early 1970's because the other day I was driving across the Platte River and saw a bald eagle fly over my car barely above the street lamp pole.

It was cool.

The only other time I have seen a bald eagle is the one I see at the Children's Zoo with half a wing missing. I try to avoid that exhibit because I find it so profoundly sad that the eagle is unable to do what it was made to do.
Now I put my head down and point the stroller toward the exit, pretending like I don't see it. Isn't that a healthy way to cope with my discomfort about the maimed bird?
I'm not sure what I'm going to do when Holden starts asking more questions.

Anyway I picked up this homemaking book thinking it would be fun to look through it and (in my head, and possibly on the car ride home) make fun of the terribly old and sexist advice it would give to young homemakers from about 1937-1961 (those were the run dates of all the editions).

But I found myself very interested in every section of the book. It described everything you might want to know about setting up a house. From decorating (including a color wheel), to styles of furniture (with pictures), to planning a kitchen, pantry staples, necessary cooking equipment and how many of each, number of linens needed and how to care for them, tips for cleaning, baking, doing laundry, and an extensive list of butcher cuts of meat and how to cook them...it went on and on. It even had some really neat pictures of midcentury homes (which is exactly my decorating style. But the book is actually from that time period so it's even cooler).

Oh how I wish someone would have given me this book at 18. The time I would have saved, the ease at which I would have been able to plan my household, storage solutions, bridal registry, etc. Of course I know some of it already, and some of it was outdated.

But I'm borrowing that book anyway and reading it cover to cover.

I've got a lot to learn.