Cleansing the Soul

Lisa Ferguson

Tuesday, March 21, 2000 | 9:06 a.m.

The next time you're scrubbing soap scum from the bathroom tiles or capturing dust bunnies from beneath the living room sofa, ponder the writings of author Cheryl Mendelson:

"Modern housekeeping ... is among the most throughly pleasant, significant and least alienated forms of work that many of us will encounter."

Yeah, sure.

Don't believe it? Well, Mendelson, who penned the best seller "Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House" (Scribner, $35), has 884 pages of information and rationale to prove it.

The former lawyer and professor spent eight years amassing and writing this volume of all things domestic -- from bed sheets to botulism, water rings to warranties and seemingly everything in between, including the annual ritual of spring cleaning.

The book, published last November, offers mountains of easy-to-understand advice and illustrations for caring for all sorts of household items and food products, among others, as well as histories of housekeeping practices.

Mendelson also makes good use of her legal expertise in chapters discussing building codes, liability laws and insurance.

"I really tried to gather juicy stuff," Mendelson said recently in a telephone interview from her New York apartment.

Starting with her own basic knowledge of how things work, she followed up with calls to product manufacturers and federal agencies, read the latest textbooks and became friendly with faculty members at various universities in her long search for information.

"With every subject, I had to sort of begin with a housewife's perspective: What are my concerns as someone who is keeping house?"

But even more interesting than instructions for properly folding a fitted bed sheet (see page 356) and sanitizing dish cloths (page 176) are Mendelson's philosophies about keeping house.

"Housekeeping, the way I define it, is everything you do that makes the home work the way it's supposed to psychologically, physically, spiritually, on every single level," she said.

Why is it so important for people to maintain a tidy abode? The reasons are varied and complex.

"(The home) is the basis of private life," she explained. That "private life" is where a person's values are formed, relationships are cemented and meals and rest are enjoyed. "Everything that matters goes on here."

So-called "humble housekeeping skills are establishing the place where it all happens," she said.

And then there are the emotions and psychology surrounding housework. Mendelson, a wife and mother of a preteen son, finds it "very, very pleasurable."

"I'm a daydreaming type of person and that's one of the things I love about housework. You start doing something with your hands -- you're ironing, you're cooking, you're cleaning -- and your mind is free and that's when you think things through and you're centered.

"I think the work is intrinsically pleasant, and that when people hate (housekeeping) a lot, that's another psychological aspect to concentrate on."

For example, when Mendelson was a newlywed she loathed washing the dishes, a chore she was relegated to as a child because it was "women's work." It made her "furious" that her brothers would play after dinner while she cleaned.

"I never could get over the feeling that something very unfair was happening. And I think that (with) many types of dislike of housework that something like that is back there (in their minds), like cleaning up your room was your punishment as a kid. There's so many negative associations. It's true for so many people."

Housekeeping, she explained, is, "just an intensely overcharged area of life, and ... all different personality types come to it with a different set of baggage."

She uses the dissatisfied housewives of the 1960s and '70s as examples. Mendelson writes that the mothers of many of today's middle-aged women fit that bill.

"These mothers taught their daughters not to get trapped but to get their (college) degree and go out into the world and fulfill their mothers' frustrated ambitions. ... Thus it came about that for a couple of generations there were more and more children who were taught little about housekeeping except indifference."

Mendelson was one of the lucky ones: She gleaned much of her domestic knowledge as a young girl observing her grandmothers, who each taught her their own tactics for making a house a home.

Raised on a Pennsylvania farm until her early teens, Mendelson cooked, cleaned, made handcrafts and tended to barnyard animals. Still, she hid her "passion for domesticity" from others for years, as she explains in Chapter One, titled "My Secret Life."

"After all, I belong to the first generation of women who worked more than they stayed home." she writes. "We knew that no judge would credit the legal briefs of a housewife, no university would give tenure to one, no corporation would promote one, and no one who mattered would talk to one at a party."

But today, Mendelson said, people "hunger" to learn age-old domestic skills. Part of what prompted her to write "Home Comforts" were the attempts she noticed by people to incorporate old-fashioned practices into their modern-day routines.

"It was just nostalgic instead of the real stuff," she said, "and I was very convinced that there was a reality to making a home, and a reality to the importance of housekeeping instead of spending your time learning to weave like they did in the 18th century. ... It will be far more satisfying to get some real knowledge under your belt than to develop nostalgic hobbies."

One of those bits of nostalgia is the idea of spring cleaning. Mendelson explains the origins of this seasonal custom in "Home Comforts."

In the early days, when homes required fuels such as oil, gas, kerosene, candles and wood for heat and light during the winter months -- which left a coating of grease and grime over all its contents -- a good scrubbing was required by the time spring rolled around.

But today's technology -- electric lights, air conditioning and gas heating -- have made such deep-cleaning rituals a thing of the past.

Still, Mendelson isn't for giving spring cleaning the boot entirely.

"It strikes me that there is a psychological attitude in the spring that we are starting again," she said. "There are religious holidays (Easter and Passover) that reinforce that, and then there is Mother Nature out there with the birds and the nests are getting built and the trees are going into leaf again.

"Despite our sense of distance from nature, there's a sense you want to join in, and we also get the restless nesting feeling around that time of year. ... All these things make spring a really nice time to do a whole group of annual chores."

Among those chores listed on Page 21: launder blankets, comforters and quilts; clean chandeliers and other light fixtures; shampoo rugs and upholstery; review insurance policies; and organize and store photographs, videos and CDs.

Chances are good that Mendelson won't have much spring cleaning to do this year: After her book was completed, she went on a cleaning binge.

"I hadn't done (spring cleaning) for years while I was writing my book because I was so swamped. But the minute I turned in that manuscript, I did the whole house and I was just floored. Oh, it was a good feeling."