Laundry
by Cheryl Mendelson

Fans of Home Comforts, rejoice! Cheryl Mendelson has a new book called Laundry. NYT covers it (reg. req./expires):

Her book is filled with laundry erotica. I was excited to come upon subsections titled “How Good Girls Wash Their Underclothes” and “How Most Women Wash Their Underclothes.” But they turned out to be very clean. Indeed, she can sound schoolmarmish: “Doing laundry well takes little more time than doing it poorly.”

For those of us who agonize over when to add bleach - a substance I regard as almost as dangerous as enriched plutonium - the real laundry porn lies in the tips. Sprinkle baking soda in your hamper. A full dryer should be two-thirds empty. Dryer sheets leave their waxy coating on your clothes. Add bleach after the washer has been running five to six minutes.

She covers everything, including the minicrisis of sorting (now that there are so many types of fabric), the decoding of care-label hieroglyphics, and getting out protein stains like egg, blood and vomit. My eyes began to glaze over only when I got to sewing and a section titled “Living With Cloth.” Even I’m not that obsessed.

So getting this.

[ Via Ms. Stiness ]