If I want to have the leisure time an accomplished nineteenth-century housekeeper had, I need to figure out how to work the way she worked. The homemaking literature I’ve been…
Inquisitive Reader Posts
So we want peaceful homes, we know why we want them, and we know getting there is not necessarily going to feel easy. But what do we actually do? I…
I’ve been trying to follow Victorian homemaking advice for a little while now. But I’ve been ignoring what most nineteenth-century experts would actually tell me if they were here right…
No Victorian-era homemaking book would be complete without a chapter on ventilation. The Victorians often attributed poor health to “bad air.” Florence Nightingale, acknowledged by many as the founder of…
Last week, I went through my to-do list on Instagram using a Victorian-era strategy. The idea comes from a chapter titled, “Comfort for the Discouraged Housekeeper.” It’s the last chapter…
So we want our homes to be peaceful, to feel like safe havens from the outside world. Where do we begin? My impulse is usually to run straight for the…
On the first day of lockdown, I tidied my closet. It’s so much less stressful to wear clothes that make you feel good when you can actually find the clothes…
Christmas feels hard this year. With everything that’s changed in our world over the course of 2020, many of us are finding that the traditions we’ve always observed around this…
We’re in lockdown. Again. Do you remember the moment you realized all of this wasn’t going to be over in six weeks? I remember thinking all we had to do…
I’m trying to plan a wedding in the middle of a global pandemic. It’s going about as well as you might expect. It’s overwhelming to try and make plans when…