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Dirt: The Quirks, Habits, and Passions of Keeping House
This is a collection to which everyone can relate: a multidimensional look at the universal challenge of keeping our stuff, our dwellings, and our personal space clean and uncluttered. How we feel about keeping house speaks volumes about who we are, our roots, relationships, and our outlook on life.
293 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
7 people are currently reading
229 people want to read
About the author
Mindy Lewis
6 books19 followersMindy Lewis is the author of Life Inside: A Memoir (Washington Square Press), co-author of A Curious Life: From Rebel Orphan to Innovative Scientistwith Thomas Haines, and editor of DIRT: The Quirks, Habits, and Passions of Keeping House(Seal Press, Spring 2009). Winner of the 2015 New Letters Essay Award, her essays have been published in Newsweek, Lilith, Arts & Letters, Body & Soul, New Letters, Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Santa Ana River Review, and Poets & Writers magazines. She has taught at The Writer's Voice, Hudson Valley Writers' Guild, Brooklyn College, and currently teaches privately.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
November 27, 2009
I picked this up because I am obsessed with the Idea of keeping house. Which is not to say that I am obsessed with keeping house. Only that after 6 years of college I often wonder how it is that the thing I feel most judged by is my ability to keep house, which despite my continual attempts, I suck at. So I am always interested how people can have spotless homes and still have a life. I didn't gain much insight with this book, but there were some little gems in the rough.
Lewis tells us in "Abhorring a Vacuum" that she hates vacuums. Apparently, she hates editing too. There are about 30 too many essays to begin with--there doesn't need to be 8 essays about how the relationship with cleaning reflects your relationship with your mother, or 8 essays about maids, and most of the ones that are good still need some major editing-- there is a prediliction to share too much about one's junk when one is writing about cleaning.
In fact here is a list of essays worth reading--throw out the rest:
"Windows" by Kathleen Crisci, "A Portrait of Ten Bathrooms" Sonya Huber, "A Clean House, A Sad Home" Michael Hill,"Spring Cleaning" Mira Bartok, "The Walden Pond Cleaning Service" Richard Goodman, "The House We Keep, the Home We Make" Rebecca McClanahan.
Lewis tells us in "Abhorring a Vacuum" that she hates vacuums. Apparently, she hates editing too. There are about 30 too many essays to begin with--there doesn't need to be 8 essays about how the relationship with cleaning reflects your relationship with your mother, or 8 essays about maids, and most of the ones that are good still need some major editing-- there is a prediliction to share too much about one's junk when one is writing about cleaning.
In fact here is a list of essays worth reading--throw out the rest:
"Windows" by Kathleen Crisci, "A Portrait of Ten Bathrooms" Sonya Huber, "A Clean House, A Sad Home" Michael Hill,"Spring Cleaning" Mira Bartok, "The Walden Pond Cleaning Service" Richard Goodman, "The House We Keep, the Home We Make" Rebecca McClanahan.
December 16, 2009
Not quite what I expected, but an interesting collection. It is sort of funny to think about how your approach to housecleaning reflects a lot of things about you and also impacts others in ways that you'd never think.
November 12, 2009
Surprisingly moving collection of true short essays. All surround the topic of housekeeping, but many address relationships.
From "No elves in the night"
p. 18 For one whole season, Audrey kept a bucket of glitter next to our front door. Every morning, as she headed out the door to school, she’d toss a handful of glitter in the air, walking through it as she headed out the door, leaving faint, barely discernible flecks of gold in her hair and on her clothes, her eyelashes even. And our floor. No point in vacuuming. And anyway, I liked it.
p. 19 For a while, I actually thought I missed their mess. But really, I understood, I just miss the ones who made it, the life we knew once—the happy clutter of days gone by when all of us were younger and glitter shone between the cracks in my floorboards.
From "Clean fights"
The night my husband, Willem, died I stayed up weeping and ironing his shirts...
From "Dirty work"
p.61 Happily, I watch a dust bunny dance across my living-room floor. “Hello, dust bunny,” I say. I consider leaning over and scooping it up, but instead I keep knitting, enjoying the click of one bamboo needle against another, the feel of the soft yarn in my hand. There are plenty of dust bunnies in my house: under my bed, tucked cozily into corners, nestled on shelves. Eventually, I will mop the floors and dust the tops of everything. But right now I am knitting. Right now I am content with my yarn and my dusty, slightly messy house.
Everyone has housekeeping issues they cannot tolerate. For me, I never leave dirty dishes in the sink, and I close cupboard and closet doors. If walking barefoot across my kitchen floor leaves the bottoms of my feet black, I wash that floor. After I cook, I clean up thoroughly. Otherwise, I don’t worry too much about housekeeping. In fits and bursts, I pull out rags and cleaning products and scrub everything in sight. This might happen four times a year, max.
p. 66 Last Saturday My mother babysat my kids so I could get some work done. When I went to pick them up at her house, I was met by a confusing sight: leprechauns and Easter bunnies mingled on the stove on salt and pepper shakers and paper napkins. Shamrocks glittered on cupboard doors, but baby chicks peeked out of ceramic eggs on countertops.
My mother is seventy-six years old, and thoughts of dementia or even a stroke did pass through my mind as I raced into the kitchen. She was sitting at the table, smoking a cigarette and playing poker on a hand-held machine.
“What’s going on?” I said.
She didn’t look up. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve got St. Patrick’s Day and Easter decorations up.”
My mother took a long drag off her cigarette. “Tell me about it,” she said. “These March Easters drive me crazy. There’s not even a week between the two this year.” She shook her head.
Relieved, I squeezed her hand. “It looks good,” I said.
Annabelle, my three-year-old, came into the kitchen wielding a dustcloth. My mother had pinned a KISS ME, I’M IRISH button on her shirt. I could have reminded my mother that not only aren’t we Irish, but Annabelle is adopted from China. But I didn’t.
“Phew!” Annabelle said. “That was a lot of dusting.”
Then my fourteen-year-old son, Sam, entered carrying a stepladder. “Easter-egg lights are up,” he announced.
“Good,” my mother said. “Now all of you get out of here so I can enjoy my house.”
We headed for the door, but not before she handed me two dishtowels, a green and white one covered in shamrocks, and a lavender one covered in Easter eggs. I paused a moment, taking in the hodgepodge of holidays, the smell of Lemon Pledge, the satisfied smile on my mother’s face in the glow of Easter lights. It made me happy, this tableau of my childhood. It meant home to me, and love.
I held my children’s hands and went toward my other home—the dusty one I had created on my own.
From "The mess at midlife"
[Rand rereads an essay he had written celebrating his “creative chaos” ten years earlier.:]
“I found I disliked the person who had written those lines. In fact, I hated him. I hated his style, or something about it, anyway. But what?
The truth about style is that it arises from the entirety of one’s circumstances, and from the self amid those circumstances. The person who wrote those lavish sentences a decade ago was someone with a lot of time on his hands. The sentences reek of leisure. That is what I hated—envied, really. The relaxation. The confidence. The ease.
And here’s the difference in circumstances: Back then I was a thirty-nine-year-old writer with a live-in girlfriend. Now I am a forty-nine-year-old husband...with a two-year-old daughter.
...
But then came Larkin, and the holy mess became quite unholy. Those piles of stuff in my office: I go digging in them and I uncover all these dread surprises. Like three long-overdue bills shoved inside a magazine contained in a shopping bag buried beneath a sack of stocking-stuffers I got for Christmas. Ouch. Eventually you just start to avoid the piles. You don’t know exactly what’s in them, just that it’s bad.
...
The list of things I don’t get done is awesome. For instance, fixing anything around the house. A year ago, a four-foot end section of rain gutter became partly detached from the roofline below a gable. It now tilted the wrong way, so that instead of draining, it filled with water during a storm, sending a cascade pounding down onto the garbage cans below. First I ignored it. Then...I moved the garbage cans. Finally I took a rope, leaned out an upstairs window, lassoed the end of the gutter, and pulled it up level—then closed the window on the rope to hold it.
And that’s how it has stayed. For a whole year now, we’ve been living with a taut rope sticking out our landing window. Every time I see it I wince. And there are dozens of winces like that in my life.”
From "No elves in the night"
p. 18 For one whole season, Audrey kept a bucket of glitter next to our front door. Every morning, as she headed out the door to school, she’d toss a handful of glitter in the air, walking through it as she headed out the door, leaving faint, barely discernible flecks of gold in her hair and on her clothes, her eyelashes even. And our floor. No point in vacuuming. And anyway, I liked it.
p. 19 For a while, I actually thought I missed their mess. But really, I understood, I just miss the ones who made it, the life we knew once—the happy clutter of days gone by when all of us were younger and glitter shone between the cracks in my floorboards.
From "Clean fights"
The night my husband, Willem, died I stayed up weeping and ironing his shirts...
From "Dirty work"
p.61 Happily, I watch a dust bunny dance across my living-room floor. “Hello, dust bunny,” I say. I consider leaning over and scooping it up, but instead I keep knitting, enjoying the click of one bamboo needle against another, the feel of the soft yarn in my hand. There are plenty of dust bunnies in my house: under my bed, tucked cozily into corners, nestled on shelves. Eventually, I will mop the floors and dust the tops of everything. But right now I am knitting. Right now I am content with my yarn and my dusty, slightly messy house.
Everyone has housekeeping issues they cannot tolerate. For me, I never leave dirty dishes in the sink, and I close cupboard and closet doors. If walking barefoot across my kitchen floor leaves the bottoms of my feet black, I wash that floor. After I cook, I clean up thoroughly. Otherwise, I don’t worry too much about housekeeping. In fits and bursts, I pull out rags and cleaning products and scrub everything in sight. This might happen four times a year, max.
p. 66 Last Saturday My mother babysat my kids so I could get some work done. When I went to pick them up at her house, I was met by a confusing sight: leprechauns and Easter bunnies mingled on the stove on salt and pepper shakers and paper napkins. Shamrocks glittered on cupboard doors, but baby chicks peeked out of ceramic eggs on countertops.
My mother is seventy-six years old, and thoughts of dementia or even a stroke did pass through my mind as I raced into the kitchen. She was sitting at the table, smoking a cigarette and playing poker on a hand-held machine.
“What’s going on?” I said.
She didn’t look up. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve got St. Patrick’s Day and Easter decorations up.”
My mother took a long drag off her cigarette. “Tell me about it,” she said. “These March Easters drive me crazy. There’s not even a week between the two this year.” She shook her head.
Relieved, I squeezed her hand. “It looks good,” I said.
Annabelle, my three-year-old, came into the kitchen wielding a dustcloth. My mother had pinned a KISS ME, I’M IRISH button on her shirt. I could have reminded my mother that not only aren’t we Irish, but Annabelle is adopted from China. But I didn’t.
“Phew!” Annabelle said. “That was a lot of dusting.”
Then my fourteen-year-old son, Sam, entered carrying a stepladder. “Easter-egg lights are up,” he announced.
“Good,” my mother said. “Now all of you get out of here so I can enjoy my house.”
We headed for the door, but not before she handed me two dishtowels, a green and white one covered in shamrocks, and a lavender one covered in Easter eggs. I paused a moment, taking in the hodgepodge of holidays, the smell of Lemon Pledge, the satisfied smile on my mother’s face in the glow of Easter lights. It made me happy, this tableau of my childhood. It meant home to me, and love.
I held my children’s hands and went toward my other home—the dusty one I had created on my own.
From "The mess at midlife"
[Rand rereads an essay he had written celebrating his “creative chaos” ten years earlier.:]
“I found I disliked the person who had written those lines. In fact, I hated him. I hated his style, or something about it, anyway. But what?
The truth about style is that it arises from the entirety of one’s circumstances, and from the self amid those circumstances. The person who wrote those lavish sentences a decade ago was someone with a lot of time on his hands. The sentences reek of leisure. That is what I hated—envied, really. The relaxation. The confidence. The ease.
And here’s the difference in circumstances: Back then I was a thirty-nine-year-old writer with a live-in girlfriend. Now I am a forty-nine-year-old husband...with a two-year-old daughter.
...
But then came Larkin, and the holy mess became quite unholy. Those piles of stuff in my office: I go digging in them and I uncover all these dread surprises. Like three long-overdue bills shoved inside a magazine contained in a shopping bag buried beneath a sack of stocking-stuffers I got for Christmas. Ouch. Eventually you just start to avoid the piles. You don’t know exactly what’s in them, just that it’s bad.
...
The list of things I don’t get done is awesome. For instance, fixing anything around the house. A year ago, a four-foot end section of rain gutter became partly detached from the roofline below a gable. It now tilted the wrong way, so that instead of draining, it filled with water during a storm, sending a cascade pounding down onto the garbage cans below. First I ignored it. Then...I moved the garbage cans. Finally I took a rope, leaned out an upstairs window, lassoed the end of the gutter, and pulled it up level—then closed the window on the rope to hold it.
And that’s how it has stayed. For a whole year now, we’ve been living with a taut rope sticking out our landing window. Every time I see it I wince. And there are dozens of winces like that in my life.”
Want to read
August 14, 2009As someone who abhors housework and therefore lives in a filthy home, I'm hoping this book will A) make me feel like it's OK and I'm not really that much of a slob or B) inspire me to not be such a slob.
July 29, 2017
heady stuff for a book about housekeeping. i will be thinking about this for a while.
April 20, 2018
This book is so boring. I really thought it would be interesting to read about different people’s attitudes towards cleaning and how they choose to decorate and keep their houses but many of the essays are just saying the same thing over and over. I’d say skip this one. You’re not missing anything here.
May 8, 2017
Read the first five stories.
December 24, 2018
Some essays were better than others, and a few seemed really off-topic, but some of the essays are quite good.
September 27, 2014
What a fascinating collection of essays, stories and memories centering around the dilemmas and joys of 'keeping house' (an old, unfashionable term but there seems none better to encapsulate the theme). Some writers have ambivalence about their level of slobbishness, or their employment of others to clean for them; others are ambivalent about their peculiar, and unfashionable, like of some aspect of cleaning; still others speak of the familial heritage of what constitutes housekeeping. Particularly touching is the writer who, with her sister, is cleaning out her mother's house preparatory to moving her to a skilled facility; she says to her sister, "This is why parents have more than one child..."-- so that no one has to do this alone. The many metaphors of dirt and concern with it loom large; the issue of hoarding raises its head as well.
Reading this collection is like a leisurely cleaning of a well-used attic; one finds treasures in many places, and revives memories, periodically seeing a glint in the corner of your eye that turns out to be your reflection, or a ghost, or a dust-sheeted sofa...
Reading this collection is like a leisurely cleaning of a well-used attic; one finds treasures in many places, and revives memories, periodically seeing a glint in the corner of your eye that turns out to be your reflection, or a ghost, or a dust-sheeted sofa...
December 13, 2009
I usually have good luck with Seal Press anthologies but very few of these pieces really stood out, in either subject matter or style. I wasn't expecting quite so many discussions of the connection between housekeeping and mental illness and those tended to all mush together to boot. A decent number tying cleaning habits (or lack thereof) back to childhood and relationship to parents, but not as many as I expected addressing the feminism angle (the Rebecca McClanahan essay on that was quite good, though) or environmentalism (Pamela Paul was the one example and mostly lost me when she claimed middle class people in the 70s could easily afford live-in help). Unexpectedly, the discussions of cleaning and race were most engaging, even though they were the furthest from my own experience. In large part because they seemed to have the strongest writers. Louise Rafkin's account of cleaning the homes of others was my favorite, and it introduced me to an interesting poet, Naomi Shihab Nye.
July 14, 2009
An interesting compendium of stories on housekeeping. Several great essays are featured including a couple from familiar authors, Ann Hood and Joyce Maynard. I was hoping for an original essay from Nancy Peacock rather than a chapter from her book, "A Broom of One's Own."
Although I'm not fond of housework and have been known at times to be a bit of a procrastinator in this area, I found a new appreciation for some of the tasks I previously found mundane. Time will tell if that appreciation translates into a dust-bunny free home.
I found one little tiny detail on the back cover a bit sexist where the publisher chose to categorize the book "Women's Interest." There were several contributors who were men. Yes, I know, studies show that women do most of the household chores, but did the publisher really mean to intentionally exclude male interest in the book?
Although I'm not fond of housework and have been known at times to be a bit of a procrastinator in this area, I found a new appreciation for some of the tasks I previously found mundane. Time will tell if that appreciation translates into a dust-bunny free home.
I found one little tiny detail on the back cover a bit sexist where the publisher chose to categorize the book "Women's Interest." There were several contributors who were men. Yes, I know, studies show that women do most of the household chores, but did the publisher really mean to intentionally exclude male interest in the book?
November 15, 2013
This compilation of essays by current authors on a number of aspects of housekeeping could have been a very compelling anthology. As it is, though, it reads more like the editor blasted the assignment out to a few dozen authors, collected the results, and published them. A few of the selections are poignant, or funny, or both, but most have a forced tone. More than a few are rather bitter. It seems that a number of the authors wanted to talk more about their relationships with their mothers or ex-spouses with the background of a conflict on cleaning. That's fine for one or two essays, but there were at least a dozen with the same tone.
I found this in a used bookstore and thought it would be interesting. It wasn't.
I found this in a used bookstore and thought it would be interesting. It wasn't.
November 18, 2010
I'm the editor, so I'm biased, but I'm very fond of this book because of the writers it contains, each with a unique take on the subject of cleaning, or not cleaning, and what housekeeping (or not) means in terms of identity, family, generations, tradition, gender, race, culture, housework pass-along, obsessions, phobias, and implications for the future. Yes, it's overstuffed with essays, but this is due to passion, not negligence. I think classifying the book as "women's interest" was misleading. These are personal essays by 38 contemporary writers, 6 of whom are men, and this is not a how-to-book.
July 4, 2013
I will never be a neat and tidy person, just keeping the chaos of creativity to a livable level seems to be my goal, I truly enjoyed this collection of short stories. Many were moving and hear-felt while others made mr grin. Still others made me uncomfortably aware of what on my past has moulded me into who I am now. Yes, I love having a clean house and, no, I don't often achieve my ideal. I will say that the best gift I ever received was from a professional cleaning friend who cleaned my house when I got home from surgery & a 14-day hospital stay. Thank you, Joyce, from the bottom of my heart. And, thank you, Mindy Lewis, for such a thought-provoking selection of stories.
May 26, 2009
I loved this book . . . even more so because it was a random choice at the library. "Dirt" is a collection of essays by a number of gifted writers about their experiences with keeping house. Some essays are lighthearted (dustbunnies as big as a person), some essays delve into more serious issues (how to keep house after losing a spouse or a parent). I laughed often and sometimes out loud while reading this book because I could see a little of myself in many of the writers' experiences. I finished the book feeling motivated to deal with all of the dirt in my own home!
June 10, 2010
Interesting set of essays that explored the sociological reasons as in to why we clean. A consistent theme in the book is that our attitudes towards organizing, cleaning, and keeping home are based largely on what our mothers taught us. How we clean and organize also depends on where we are at in life, whether college, working mom, or single. The book explores economic factors that influence our ability to clean up after ourselves or to hire help. It discusses differences in attitudes based on gender and race. Some of the essays became a bit repetitive and tedious towards the end.
January 3, 2011
I randomly checked this out from the library, and ended up really liking it. More than just a collection of essays about how people keep house, it gives a glimpse into our relationships with things, and how that in turn affects our relationships with people, especially our mothers and our spouses. The authors were a nice combination of neat freaks and live-and-let-livers, with a few hoarders thrown in. It made me think about my own history of dirt -- in fact, I've started working on my own dirt essay, just for fun.
March 5, 2011
Who thought "dirt" could inspire such poignant essays? This book fascinated me. I actually read it late into the night, a weakness usually reserved for fictional works. I can't rate it any higher, though, in spite of some surprisingly good writing (by professionals and students, alike) because overall, the topic STRESSED me out! I take the motto to heart "Clean enough to be sanitary, messy enough to be sane", but good heavens, I have four little kids. Living in filth & hoarding scare me. So, to see this failing in so many otherwise successful people was disturbing, to say the least.
December 1, 2011
I definitely could see my own habits reflected in some of the essays. People are definitely quirky when it comes to how they keep house and the things they are inflexible about. I do not like anyone doing my dishes, it makes me so anxious when other people load my dishwasher, but other things don't bother me at all. We are all a study in contradictions when it comes to housekeeping! I gave it a 3 star rating as an average among all the different writers/essays because I loved some and didn't love some ;)
August 5, 2010
In any collection of essays there are generally some duds and some gems, which proved true with this one, focusing on aspects of housekeeping (or lack thereof!) in the authors' lives. Individually (or in small doses) the stories may have been fine, but as a large collection the premise didn't hold up well enough over the long run. I was left after finishing each section as though I were reading a required school text, rather than for pleasure.
July 15, 2009
My favorite essay was by a woman whose mother loved to decorate the house for every single holiday. She, the daughter, wasn't at all interested in doing that, but eventually they came to a compromise. The daughter agreed, and began to enjoy, using festive dishtowels that reflected the current holiday. I'm not at all into holiday decorating but I do think it's cute and sweet how some people take it so seriously. And I think I could manage the dishtowel thing. :)
November 25, 2011
I loved this book of essays about our emotional relationship to housekeeping. On the surface, it seems a mundane topic, but it's something that affects our everyday mood, relationships, quality of life, and sense of personal identity. Some essays were more engaging than others, but overall, they were very well-written. The best books inspire a narrative in my own mind--something that I would write about my own experiences on the topic. Working on that now...
November 25, 2013
I grabbed this quickly at the library but was disappointed by it. To me the title suggests that the book is more historical and nonfiction than what it really is: a collection of personal essays, each having some mention of housekeeping in them...somewhere. Not sure why I read the whole thing (it's fairly long) except that essays are a quick start and finish, so it worked for the time I have available.
July 16, 2009
If you suffer from OCD or exist at the other end of the spectrum (i.e., you hate to clean) this book of essays is for you. It delves into the reasons people clean -- or do not clean -- and what this ritual means to us as human beings. I can guarantee that you never thought cleaning was so fraught with memories or meaning before you read this book!
July 21, 2010
A very hit-or-miss collection of essays on the topic of cleaning. While there were some good insights (feeling owned by your messes instead of the other way around) too many were way off the mark. (One entire section should have been taken out, in my opinion)
If Cleaning is a universal issue, why did the publishers put a subject designation on the back cover of "Women's Interests"?
If Cleaning is a universal issue, why did the publishers put a subject designation on the back cover of "Women's Interests"?
January 15, 2015
This is a fine collection of essays about the physical act of cleaning and housekeeping, but also about the philosophy and politics and psychology of keeping house. After reading each essay, I treated myself to cleaning out a drawer or organizing a closet. It felt like such an authentic way to experience the writing. When I finished the last piece, I longed for more.
Read
July 16, 2010I cannot believe how homogeneous the writers in this book are in terms of class and race (not 100% but close) but some of the writers' thoughts on housekeeping/cleanliness/dirt and how that related to relationships with partners or parents resonated with me.
December 8, 2009
I'm enjoying this book of essays I found on the library's new non-fiction display shelf. Some of them have really made me laugh. Who knew a book about people's housekeeping attitudes and habits would be so enjoyable!
January 30, 2011
So, I really would give it 3 1/2 stars b/c some of the essays were brilliant and insightful and very entertaining. But I found others to be boring, odd, and overly dramatic. The first section and the last sections were my favorite.
January 16, 2012
First anthology I've read in a long time and reminded me that I loved and missed them. Keeping house and other domestic issues are an ongoing area of interest to me and this definitely was an important read for me !
Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews