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(More customer reviews)Have you ever seen the novelty book called Porn for Women? It features good-looking men doing housework with captions such as "Is this how you want the shirts folded?" or "I like to get started on the dishes right away."
How To Get Things Really Flat by Andrew Martin is the literary equivalent of Porn for Women ... except without the photos. Imagine an entire book dedicated to the art and "joys" of housekeeping written entirely by a man and for men!
Make no mistake ... this is not a dry guide to doing housework with charts and graphs and other things you might expect from a man. Instead, this is a humorous guide to housework that includes practical housekeeping tips but is primarily for enjoyment and entertainment. The book has 11 chapters, which each focusing on a different aspect of cleaning. Just reading some of the chapter headings will give you an idea of the book's tone.
* Chapter 3: Ironing includes sections such as "Do I Need To Bother With the Controls On the Iron?" and "What Is the Worst Thing That Can Happen During Ironing?"
* Chapter 4: Washing Up includes a section called "How To Load A Dishwasher Without Causing Comment."
* Chapter 6: Dust focuses on topics such as "During Dusting, Where Does the Dust Go?" and "Dusting Things That Are Really Hard To Dust."
* Chapter 7: Cleaning covers topics as diverse as "Toilet Cleaning: An Overview" and "How To Impress People with Bicarbonate of Soda."
* Chapter 8: The Weekly Shop includes sections on "Characteristics of the Male Shopper" and "I Suppose I've Got to Put the Food Away Now"
* Chapter 9: Doing Christmas, which includes a section called "What's the Least Amount of Time I Can Spend on Writing and Sending Christmas Cards?"
* Chapter 10: Advanced Housework focuses on things such as "Exotic Cleaning," "Moths" and "Household Aesthetics: A Brief Introduction for the Tasteless Man."
Martin has a droll writing style that fits the material perfectly. Although the book contains plenty of practical and useful information, Martin's approach is always amusing and typically male. After all, who else but a man would describe grocery shopping and the putting away of groceries like this:
"You come home with the food. You drop the bags in a heap just inside the front door. You call out, "I've done the shopping, now you put it away!" and then you stomp off and check your e-mails. It's a natural reaction to the shame of having spent half an hour in the supermarket. I mean, to all intents and purposes you've just taken a carving knife and cut your balls off. But there are double brownie points for the man who not only does the shopping but also puts it away, which is, in any case, satisfying work. You've stocked up on supplies and you're ready for anything: sudden illness, heavy snow, the withdrawal of your credit card. In the back of my mind, as I pack the shelves of my fridge, I'm Shackleton's quartermaster, stocking the Endeavour for its long voyage south."
Although women may not quite envision themselves as Shackleton's quartermaster after grocery shopping, I very much related to what got Martin in trouble before he learned how to properly grocery shop. In fact, I was unable to go grocery shopping unescorted for over a year because of the very same mistakes Martin made:
"My own strategy would be to seek consolation in the purchase of little treats. Having control of the food budget would go to my head, and I'd buy all the food prohibited to me in childhood: miniature chocolate Swiss rolls, Nesquik, a bumper bag of Frazzles. Even as I did this, I would be able to picture my wife pulling these items out of the bags at home and sternly inquiring, "You did remember the garbage bags, I hope?" Not having planned my shopping in advance, I'd be afflicted by a fatal whimsicality. I'd see Camp Coffee and think, Are they still making that stuff? They had it in the war. It's made from chicory. It's a nice-looking bottle--almost a museum piece. I'll buy some and tell the boys all about it.Or I'd catch sight of one of those sachets of herbs called bouquet garni and half remember a recipe for stew that involved it. I'd then go looking for the other ingredients, perhaps giving up halfway through, at which point I'd notice that I couldn't fit any more food in my trolley, or that things were starting to fall out of the bloody thing. I'd look at other people's trolleys and see that they were all bigger than mine, and it would dawn on me that I'd taken one of the medium-sized trolleys, one of those designed to be not quite big enough to hold a full weekly shop for a family of four."
As you might guess from the previous excerpt, Martin is British. Fortunately, he's thoughtfully provided a guide for American readers unfamiliar with British terms like trolley (i.e., a shopping cart). Another quintessentially British moment was the extreme politeness Martin advocates when a guest spills red wine on your rug at a party:
"Obviously, the truly correct and gracious thing to do immediately after someone has spilled red wine in your house is to offer them another glass. No guest ought to be left standing around, holding an empty glass and doing their best to apologize while the host pats away at the carpet on hands and knees, saying over and over again, "Ruined . . . absolutely bloody ruined!"
By the way, according to Martin's extensive research, the most effective way to remove a red wine stain from a carpet is to blot it immediately with a paper towel and then to use soda water for the rest.
This book was just a delight to read. I was smiling throughout (except when I was jotting down ideas to help me improve my own housecleaning, which leaves something to be desired). I've got to share a few more excerpts with you that particularly amused me or had me shaking my head in agreement:
"There may well be a lot of stainless steel in your kitchen, for example. This has been fashionable since the 1980s, and gives you kitchen the charm of . . . well, of an operating theater, or perhaps an abattoir."
"Incidentally, I never waste money on buying big eggs, never having heard anybody complain, "These eggs are too small."
The only section that doesn't deal directly with housework is the section on surviving Christmas, which Marin justifies like this:
"Sartre said that hell is other people. Christmas is other people plus housework. It is child care, washing, cleaning, tidying, and cooking with tremendously strong deadline pressure, which is why it merits a chapter here."
This particular chapter had me highlighting passages all over the place. Not to seem like a Grinch or anything, but how apt are these thoughts on the most stressful of holidays?
"... I have often thought that if Christmas could be somehow reclassified, moved from the category of pleasure and put into that of ordeal, then it might paradoxically be more enjoyable. A man ought to regard it as a test of his resourcefulness, diplomacy, tolerance, and advance planning: as a kind of giant time-and-motion problem, the aim being maximal effectiveness for minimal grief."
"The bottom line is that most people couldn't care less whether you send them a Christmas card or not. It took me years to learn this, and I'd become involved in games of psychological "chicken" (except that they were played only on my side): "Ought I to send X a card? He hasn't been in touch for ages. I'll wait and see whether he sends me one. . . ." The day of last Christmas mailing arrives, and still no card from X. . . . "He must have taken against me in a big way. Why? Was it that time that I laughed at his haircut? You can't legislate for spontaneous expression of emotion; he should know that. . . . Anyway, I won't be sending him one ever again." And then the next day, a card arrives from X: "Sorry not to have been in touch this year. I've been laid low with rather a serious illness, but I'm on the mend now. Drink soon? It'd be great to meet up." On these occasions, I used to wish that it was legitimate practice to send what might be called a post-Christmas card, expressing the sentiment: "Sorry I couldn't be bothered to send you a Christmas card, but you've been uppermost in my mind all year."
My Final Recommendation
If you are a woman: My suggestion is to get a copy for yourself, read it, enjoy it, and then regift it to the man in your life with some relevant sections highlighted for his perusal. (Suck him in with the funny parts first before going for the kill.)
If you are a man: My suggestion is to get a copy for yourself, read it and put at least some of the information to work in your household. I pretty much guarantee that the result will be a more relaxed and happy partner who just might be willing to engage in amorous relations with you more often. After all, you're freeing her up by doing the laundry, ironing and grocery shopping now!
Click Here to see more reviews about: How to Get Things Really Flat: Enlightenment for Every Man on Ironing, Vacuuming and Other Household Arts
Perfectly pitched to strike some raw nerves: A witty, often surprising manifesto about how and why men should do housework-and a very useful guide for both the millions of men who shirk household duties and the women who live with them
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