The Bottom Line
If you enjoy homespun wisdom and long for a greater quality of life in our hectic world, you'll find this book gives useful tips for managing your home as well as improving your relationships.
Pros
- A charming read that returns us to gentler times.
- Good reminders of basic entertaining etiquette.
- Many practical tips for home management.
Cons
- Requires a relaxed mindset to fully appreciate it.
Description
- This book is filled with advice on managing tasks required in basic homekeeping.
- There are many useful reminders of commonsense etiquette as it applies to entertaining guests.
- There's a small collection of simple, southern recipes for comfort food.
- A section is devoted to flower gardening and arranging, as well as vegetable gardening.
- Includes advice on raising children.
- Lots of old-fashioned recipes for cleaners, beauty products and home remedies.
- There is a lot of quaint advice on how to live a happy life.
Guide Review - Mrs. Dunwoody's Excellent Instructions for Homekeeping by M. Lukken
This is the kind of book your great-grandmother may have left for her descendents if she had the time or literary inclination to do so. The voice of the fictional Mrs. Dunwoody was based upon writings left by nineteenth-century Southern women as advice for their daughters when they established their own homes. The tone is very old-fashioned, and could initially turn off some readers. At times I felt as though an elder aunt was sitting down with me and passing on advice that she felt was important. My first reaction was to scoff at it as tips from someone out of touch with today's world. But on further reflection, if we get past our prejudices long enough to follow even some of this book's wisdom, our quality of life would improve.
