Where to get the Book of Boff published?

[BoffinMum]

As some of you may know from other threads, or from being sent bits of my housekeeping book to help you out, I have written a domestic manual for those short of time and money that I'd like to get published. I did a lot of research into pitches, wrote what I think is a good one, and susequently approached Darley Anderson, a literary agency, and also Dorling Kindersley, the publisher, and have got absolutely nowhere (not that I expected to, tbh). Not even a standard 'thank you for your email' response. I would welcome any advice people care to give me on how to move this on, as I think it would be a real shame if it never saw the light of day.

I'd love the efficiency angle. I'd buy something that explains me how to minimize time spent on housework and maximize impact.

I'd love a modern housekeeping manual. I'd love a subversive feminist angle. I'd love a 21st century Mrs Beeton. I don't want any management slang in something I read during my free time /buy with my own money. Boff, I think your blog uses too much passive voice and is slightly - not sure - boring or patronising. You should read very carefully Nigella's How to Eat, I think she hss mastered the style of writing deliciously about something that has been done to death (do we really need another basic cookbook?).

I went to your blog to find housekeeping shortcuts - and I found a post about how to vacuum bookshelves (something I've decided never to do, or if needed. definitely something I'd outsource). Love the menu ideas though, I think you are on to something with them. To keep reading, I'd need a how to do a quick and efficient weekly home cleaning.

Men who are interested in reading stuff based on business models aren't interested in doing the housework.

Now I'm pretty sure it doesn't advise pregnant women with spd to decorate bathrooms

My favourite book for cooking is Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It is beautifully done, informative, but is so warm and lovely to read that it feels less like a cook book than something lifestyle-y.

Bonsoir's link is the nicest looking of housekeeping books. But the others, the pink ones, make me want to run away covering my eyes.

Dirtymartini - see Boffinmums' post of 14:55:10 for a link

DonaAna, your wish is very definitely my command.

Weekly cleaning schedule

The thing about Nigella is - well - it's Nigella, making people think they are vaguely inadequate. Along with Martha Stewart, women's glossies and so on. Now Shirley Conran's Superwoman is probably a classic in terms of writing well about something essentially tedious, from a more feminist standpoint, but very much of its time, so a lot of it is like a catalogue of cleaning products with a few juicy quotes thrown in, for example, "Sack the au pair and teach the children to cook instead, it saves effort because you don't change your children every year". That kind of nugget.

PMSL Bronze.
Bathroom still looks good and I didn't even have to wash the paintbrushes that time.

BoffinMum - I think Nigella's key selling point with How To Eat was that she updated traditional recipes for the modern gadget era. I learned to cook with Constance Spry, and very useful that was; Nigella just makes it all so much easier, without forfeiting taste (as Delia does).

Nigella doesn't make me feel inadequate - on the contrary, I feel rather superior as I don't feed my family nearly as much junk as she seems to

did Katherine Whitehorn ever do a housework book? She did cooking and children.

Mary Beard did The Good Working Mothers Guide in the 80s which has some good stuff on domestic management but too limited to one particular lifestyle.

How many threads on here complain that men don't do their fair share, or consider any housework as "helping", ie it's really the woman's job?
What sort of a book could make progress here, without being confined to the feminism section of the bookshop?

A book called How to Have More Sex with your Wife with a big chapter on how women feel respected and cared for when the man pulls his weight with housely chores and thus will feel more amorous towards him.

Yes, indeed, pointydog. Unfortunately, publishers would probably consider that to be sexual harassment and feminist provocation - no?

I'd've thought most publishers just go for big sellers.

My serious-face answer would be that no book on housework could make progress in this area.

Actually, I want a book that is called "How to do your housework to a much higher standard in much less time than you ever thought possible".

Actually, I bet Collins would love it.

Xpost, sorry - I meant Pointy's idea :)

TYV, thanks for pointing me to link. Will follow it when not on iPod -too fiddly.

Bonsoir, I think we need a new wave of technology to help us with that. Self cleaning windows (Pilkington Glass), robot vacuums (Roomba), special machines to suck up dust like in operating theatres and the like, anti-bacterial toilets, central vaccuuming systems, laundry collection pipes, shirt ironing machines and rotary ironers, and so on. All these things exist and could perfectly well be incorporated into the modern home by developers, but ultimately we do not demand them, and instead spend our lives dusting and scrubbing, hoovering and wiping. Strange, when you think about it.

I send shirts out for ironing and they are ironed by machine . And they come back far better ironed than I or anyone I have ever employed to iron can manage.

I also adore the no-commitment outsourcing aspect - I just drop the shirts at the cleaners (25m from my front door, that I pass 10 times a day) whenever I like, and pick up 24 hours later.

I love machines that do housework!

I used to iron my dad's shirts for money as a teenager and am consequently quite good at it but today I was ironing a shirt for dh and thinking thank goodness he only has to wear a suit to work occasionally....

these ironing machines, do they not break the buttons any more? I remember shirts with lots of half-buttons snapped off.

I was reading an interview with the Edwardian Farm presenters the other day and it was striking that when they were asked if they would have liked to have lived then, the men were a bit wistful about it but the woman was quite emphatic that she wouldn't.
The amount of drudgery in housework before washing machines and vacuum cleaners and central heating must have been astonishing.

No, the only issue is that the top buttons fall off a bit more quickly (but only after a year or so) than when the ironing is done in-house. But I can live with that!

I just love no commitment outsourcing of housework. My idea of hell is the FT housekeeper underfoot all day, which is the norm round these parts.

I can imagine French housekeepers being very good at being disapproving.

not that I imagine that that is what would be your problem with having one

The problem with outsourcing is that often you have to be in a metroplitan area to do so. There are very many parts of the UK where it is nigh on impossible to drop shirts off for ironing. You can do it round by me but you have to wait a week to get them back, and it's very pricey.

Oh, just came back to read your blog and the link isn't working (it's Dirty here, btw). Is it just me, or is it down at the moment?

Try this

Austerity Housekeeping