Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1386 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-29
• Released on: 2007-03-29
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Synopsis
Your home should be somewhere you look forward to spending time. It should be a haven from the stresses of the world. You should be proud to have your friends round for dinner and they should leave impressed by your comfortable, clean, homely home. Nowadays, we don't all have the time or energy to make the most of our homes. But with a little help from Anthea, the queen of clean, you too can have a beautiful, clean and comfortable home to be truly proud of. With tips on everything from decluttering to dry cleaning, storage solutions to spring cleaning, dinner parties to brunches, this is an indispensable guide. There are simple lessons on each aspect of home making from cleaning to ironing to washing to tidying as well as top tips on entertaining. You will learn to entertain in style, with little effort and cost. Whether you're a housewife, or a young professional or student just setting up home, the Perfect Housewife has helpful hints to get you organised. You can save time and energy and turn your house into a home with Anthea Turner!

Customer Reviews

Hail Queen Anthea!
My friends all laugh at me and say I have OCD cleaning issues, but Antheas book informed me that I am running a tidy household! Her tips are great, especially her spring cleaning list, which I am working through just now even though it is summer. The tips for cleaning out your wardrobes have inspired me to get a babysitter this week and devote a day to tackle my wardrobe problems. I found the book quite positive and inspirational in parts. I have read a lot of it previously in a 1950's book I found about home management and just wonder how much Anthea got from historical cleaning routines that have been written about. Nevertheless, this is a good book and tends itself well for the new housekeeper, it can be daunting if you are not quite as precise as Anthea and may leave you feeling you are 'not quite' meeting standards expected, but it gives you something to aim for, I loved Antheas TV series and bought the dvd to actually watch the tips in action, again, as another reviewer stated, it would have been nice to have some demonstration pics in the book. I have changed my opinion of Anthea, I did honestly think (sorry Anthea!) that she was a bit of a nobody, but my opinions have definately changed and I hope she does another series. I really do think that a lot more woman would like to devote more time to their households but the pace and way of life these days means woman are split in so many directions, I am just thankful my life allows me the freedom to work and also keep an orderly home.
4 stars Anthea!

Please don't buy this TV cash-in
Surely having a happy home is vastly more important than feeling inadequate because the never-seen-or-used upward facing sill of your doorframes are dusty. I agree very strongly with all the points made in the review by flingthecow in June 2007.

If you are thinking about buying this book, please consider that Anthea Turner makes her living from her public image and in this case by the humiliation of the "students" on this show. She is one of today's "celebrities" who appear on reality shows, sell photo rights of their wedding day to gossip magazines. I understand that the premise of the book and the tv series is that Anthea maintains the enormous mansion shown on TV to her exacting standards with no help, and that this "perfect housewife" image has been very helpful to Anthea in terms of combatting some of the less flattering media coverage. To me it seems somewhat implausible that she isn't employing someone, if only to allow her enough time for her media appearances etc. There has been a lot of public concern over other TV misrepresentaions of the truth recently and I wonder if the more subtle ones may be also be quite damaging.

Preachy rant over, I am very sorry to say that I am now about to buy a copy of this book and DVD for my sister-outlaw. Perhaps my bitterness is because she has rejected the present which we spent hours searching for and fixing up. So, faced with the prospect of moodiness at family get-togethers, and my partner getting to see his delightful nieces even less often than he already does, my ideological objections to this cheap TV cash-in have been banished in favour of express delivery.

sigh....

Inspiration & Motivation!
I find that books like this one (ie How Clean Is Your House, 10 Minute Housekeeping, Sink Reflections, etc.) as well as the related shows out there are motivators for me. I enjoy finding out new things about household management, organization, and cleaning just as I enjoy trying out new recipes. You may not use every single tip that's in the book but I'll bet you do find one or two things that you hadn't thought of or tried before! If in the long run it's going help me apply KISS (Keep It Supremely Simple) principles then I'm all for it.

While the book is catagorized very well, I find that I can pick it up and start reading anywhere. The book & show have inspired me and given me that theoretical "kick in the pants". Now I am definitely not going to win Homemaker of the Year but I can honestly say that Anthea & her book have given me food for thought and inspired me to want to do better. I will NEVER have a house as clean as hers but if I can use just a portion of the ideas and routines she presents, then maybe I won't have to be running around like a chicken with its head cut off when it comes time for the holidays, or company coming.

I don't think that a clean, well managed house and warm inviting home are mutually exclusive! It's just nice to know that if I WANT to use some special touches(like when mother-in-law visits) or need some practical information - I have a wonderful resource to guide me.

***** The only thing lacking is the same comment previous reviewers have had and that is I wish there were some detailed diagrams & photos to go along with some of the things she has demonstated on her show.

I am from the US and extremely envious that those of you in Region 2 are able to purchase and at least WATCH Anthea's DVD as well. I don't know if or when I'll see the show again on the BBCA channel.

Who do I need to talk to about getting some of your wonderful shows in the UK on DVDs that we can play here in the US??!!