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Clean Sweep: The Ultimate Guide to Decluttering, Detoxing, and Destressing Your Home
Use the gentle art of household management to transform your home into a clean, efficient, safe, healthy haven. Every piece of household advice you could ever need is at your fingertips: from big issues such as how to do your bit for the environment, to advice on the most indulgent home comforts, such as preparing your own lavender-water spray for scenting linen as you iron. It offers a variety of options, to help you make 'clever' choices in homemaking: traditional, tried and tested methods; 'green' alternatives; and more conventional approaches. This is housekeeping for a new generation. Key points: the author has many years experience in researching and writing on health, environmental and consumer issues; this manual incorporates a number of ideas: that a house should be healthy, efficient, safe and comfortable to live in; as economical as possible to run; and that it should not take an undue toll on the environment; there is a chapter on housekeeping essentials, discussing basic housekeeping equipment, cleaning products (both proprietary and homemade), and detailed poisons information; a full chapter is dedicated to cleaning and stain removal, with an A-Z of stains troubleshooting chart; housekeeping outdoors is also covered, for example cleaning concrete, establishing a compost heap; quotes and excerpts from traditonal almanacs add an extra level of interest for general browsing.
- GenresNonfiction
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
30 people are currently reading
50 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 2, 2020
What can I say about this book...two stars because despite itself, there was some useful advice. The problem is, I can’t tell WHICH advice was useful, because there was enough obviously inaccurate information and enough lack of fact checking that I don’t know what to trust.
First you should know this book is published in Australia, and ostensibly targeted to a global audience, but it isn’t aware of the many Australian-isms that make much of the advice difficult to follow (what is a doona? What is methylated spirits? Toilet soap? Etc). Nothing wrong with an Australian book of course, and my canadian perspective isn’t the only valid one, but it would have been useful to have that context or a glossary.
Second, this book has a single page on decluttering, one page per chapter on “clever” home upgrades (an odd choice of word but presumably a play on “smart home” combined with green choices), and has no mention at all about destressing your home. Detoxing your home is a frequent theme, but this book contradicts itself all over the place. Examples of chemicals recommended for household cleaning use include malathion, permethrin, kerosene, methyl hydrate, petrol, acetate, turpentine. Not that I inherently have anything against these chemicals, but they seem at odds with the general thrust of the book.
Third, the author has no bio or credentials to give credence to the research that’s been done.
Fourth, there are some actually inaccurate statements such as that DEET in banned in the US - it was created in the USA and has never been banned there.
Fifth, despite supposedly being about de cluttering and destressing, in order to implement all the DIY cleaning recipes listed here I would need a cupboard of ingredients and a lot of extra time to make up recipes each time I cleaned.
Upsides of the book:
- I’ll always take an effort at greener choices
- lots of DIY home cleaner recipes, most of which seem safe and legitimate, even if a bunch include bizarre and obscure ingredients.
- included some useful information explaining the chemistry of laundry detergents and the properties of various fabrics
- I felt inspired to take better care of my stuff and clean more
- good to get some talk about repairing clothing in
This book was written in 2004 so perhaps the discussion about how to clean your VHS player is forgivably outdated, and some of this nontoxic life stuff may have been more cutting edge at the time, which could explain why many of the suggestions are actually far from low-tox.
Overall, Skip this book. Or use it exclusively for its stain removal section. A better title would have been: “clean sweep: how a light-green household can clean everything with DIY solutions”
First you should know this book is published in Australia, and ostensibly targeted to a global audience, but it isn’t aware of the many Australian-isms that make much of the advice difficult to follow (what is a doona? What is methylated spirits? Toilet soap? Etc). Nothing wrong with an Australian book of course, and my canadian perspective isn’t the only valid one, but it would have been useful to have that context or a glossary.
Second, this book has a single page on decluttering, one page per chapter on “clever” home upgrades (an odd choice of word but presumably a play on “smart home” combined with green choices), and has no mention at all about destressing your home. Detoxing your home is a frequent theme, but this book contradicts itself all over the place. Examples of chemicals recommended for household cleaning use include malathion, permethrin, kerosene, methyl hydrate, petrol, acetate, turpentine. Not that I inherently have anything against these chemicals, but they seem at odds with the general thrust of the book.
Third, the author has no bio or credentials to give credence to the research that’s been done.
Fourth, there are some actually inaccurate statements such as that DEET in banned in the US - it was created in the USA and has never been banned there.
Fifth, despite supposedly being about de cluttering and destressing, in order to implement all the DIY cleaning recipes listed here I would need a cupboard of ingredients and a lot of extra time to make up recipes each time I cleaned.
Upsides of the book:
- I’ll always take an effort at greener choices
- lots of DIY home cleaner recipes, most of which seem safe and legitimate, even if a bunch include bizarre and obscure ingredients.
- included some useful information explaining the chemistry of laundry detergents and the properties of various fabrics
- I felt inspired to take better care of my stuff and clean more
- good to get some talk about repairing clothing in
This book was written in 2004 so perhaps the discussion about how to clean your VHS player is forgivably outdated, and some of this nontoxic life stuff may have been more cutting edge at the time, which could explain why many of the suggestions are actually far from low-tox.
Overall, Skip this book. Or use it exclusively for its stain removal section. A better title would have been: “clean sweep: how a light-green household can clean everything with DIY solutions”
December 5, 2011
I had borrowed this book from the library just to see if there was something else I could do about the stuff in the bathroom. My usual solution is to bleach everything down and just leave it. So far it has been working but it's not that great on the kids' lungs. They have so many solutions for fixing things up. I love this book so much that I ordered it on Amazon. The stuff it suggests it has something for everything. It's an amazing resource. Now I have to implement what I have learned. Oy vey!!!
December 30, 2013
Not really worth reading...for decluttering. It has great stain removal tips and a nice size kinda fits in your hand and has great magazine like photos. But mostly it has great tips on how to clean. I couldn't find the decluttering sections at all.
September 9, 2016
Cute concept, but not very practical. This book makes for a nice read, but I have not felt the need to keep the book after going through it once.
January 17, 2017
good hints
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews