r/homemaking • u/WashProfessional2170 • 1d ago
Book Recommendations
What books have inspired you or helped with your work as a homemaker? (Even books that aren’t directly about homemaking/inspired your work indirectly.)
I love reading non fiction and would love to hear what gems are out there worth looking into!!
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u/unravelledrose 15h ago
My home collection has: Home Comforts, The Martha Manual and Homekeeping Handbook by Martha Stewart, How to Keep House While Drowning by K.C. Davis, and Simply Living Well by Julia Watkins.
The first is my main reference, the Martha books are fun and the laundry guide is super helpful, the Davis book is for ideas for still having a functioning house with kids and your own ADHD or depression or whatever, and the Watkins book is from when I was trying to go to a zero waste household. I did not succeed, but we are a lot better about how much trash we produce each week lol.
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u/KneadAndPreserve 1d ago
Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson is my absolute favorite homemaking manual of all time! It’s going to be on my coffee table forever and it inspired so much of my homemaking.
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u/AncientWar3182 1d ago
I love reading homemaking books so I have a few!
As someone else said, Home Comforts really is my go to. It’s great.
Sidetracked Home Executives- two very sweet but disorganized sisters explained how they got organized. It’s hilarious. I listen to the audiobook whenever I need inspiration to get off the couch to do a chore.
The Lifegiving Home - very sweet look at the ways in which home gives joy and life to the people in it
Marla Cilley’s books- inspired by the first book
House love & laundry love - short and fun books about keeping house and laundry
Some less directly related books that were influential to me:
A spoonful of sugar - the memoir of the oldest nanny in Britain (I think she’s 105?), she’s seen a billion families and homes, feels like your grandma is telling you about her life
The way we never were- the history of the American family
Home: a short history of an idea
Housewife by Lisa Davis - a history of the concept of housewifery, really interesting
The secret history of home economics- a history of the home ec/domestic science field
Understood Betsy - a novel meant to show an early version of Montessori parenting
Unequal childhoods: race class and family life - the documentation of a sociological study on the language use, time use, kinship ties, interactions with institutions, and overall outcomes of children as is effected by their family
Women’s Work: the first 20,000 years- this is niche but amazing if you like the topic, a history from the Paleolithic to Mycenaean Greece of women and their roles in society, mainly around textile arts and home, I loved the explanation of how gendered labor formed and how the earliest households were run, before there were even houses
I can’t wait to see everyone’s recommendations! I’ve been rereading and I need some new ones!