DIRT The Quirks, Habits, and Passions of Keeping House

by Lewis, Mindy

• ISBN13: 9781580052610
• ISBN10: 1580052614
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-04-14
• Publisher: Seal Press

Summary

We all have an amusing relationship with dirt. Some of us have just thought about it more than others. How we feel about keeping house speaks volumes about who we are, our roots, relationships, and even our outlook on life. Everyone can relate to DIRT. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Mindy Lewis is the author of Life Inside: A Memoir (Atria Books 2002, Washington Square Press 2003), which was named a Book of the Year by the American Journal of Nursing, an ELLE magazine “Must Read”, and received a starred Kirkus review. Her essays have been published in Newsweek, Lilith, Poets & Writers, and Body & Soul magazines, as well as anthologies. She enjoys leaving the creative clutter in her Upper West Side apartment to teach workshops in memoir, nonfiction, and cross-genre writing at The Writer's Voice, annual seminars at Empire State College, and recently taught an undergraduate course in writing nonfiction prose at Brooklyn College. She has given readings, panels and presentations at a variety of colleges, universities, and conferences. Lewis lives in New York.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vii
Dirt: An Introduction	p. xi
Family Dirt	p. 1
My Dirty Little Secret	p. 5
No Elves in the Night	p. 11
I Don't Know What to Do With You	p. 21
Family Heirloom	p. 29
Country Living	p. 33
Ba'lebusteh	p. 37
Clean Fights	p. 43
Dust Of Generations	p. 47
Windows	p. 51
Dirty Work	p. 61
The Beauty of Help	p. 69
Clutter	p. 79
Dust	p. 87
A Clean Well-Cluttered Place	p. 93
Down & Dirty	p. 101
Dirty Nostalgia	p. 105
A Portrait of Ten Bathrooms	p. 113
Keeping It on the O/C	p. 123
Adventures in Fluff	p. 129
Cleaning Up	p. 137
Abhorring a Vacuum	p. 141
The Mess at Midlife	p. 151
Into/Out of the Closet	p. 159
Transitional Objects	p. 163
Closet Fantasies	p. 171
Buddha in the Closet	p. 175
Spring Cleaning	p. 183
Hungry Heart	p. 191
Other People's Dirt	p. 199
The Color of Cinnamon	p. 203
We're Tired, She's Hired	p. 209
Disinfect to Protect	p. 213
Cleaning Ambivalence	p. 221
A Clean House, a Sad Home	p. 231
The Intimate Lives of Houses	p. 235
Ecstatically Cleaning the Toilet	p. 239
The Walden Pond Cleaning Service	p. 245
A Clean New World	p. 249
Waxing Poetic	p. 253
Sweet Sheets	p. 259
Green, if Not Clean	p. 263
The Road to Vacuum Glory	p. 269
The House We Keep, the Home We Make	p. 275
About the Contributors	p. 283
About the Author	p. 293
Acknowledgments	p. 295
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.