HM4MEN: A Manual of Household Management for Men

By John Standingford

More and more men are finding themselves in sole charge of their households, with little experience and no training. This manual of household management is for them.
Based on his personal experience, the author explains domestic tasks in terms that are meaningful to men. He distinguishes the necessary from the discretionary. Best of all, he shows how a household may be efficiently managed with the least possible effort and expense.
HM4MEN is meant to be a reference book, with 60 topics arranged in alphabetical order – from Bed-Making to Windows – and helpful cross-references between topics. It is also meant to be an entertaining read, so humour takes its place alongside the serious advice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Standingford
• Release date: Jun 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311625007

John Standingford

John was born in London, grew up on Merseyside and now lives in Adelaide, Australia. This is his wife Mary's home town, but they met and married in Bangladesh in the year of the first moon-landing. They now have two grown-up sons and two grandsons.John's life has been spent mainly as an itinerant economist, working in most countries in the Asia-Pacific region and most of the former Soviet republics.Now he is fulfilling a lifelong ambition to be a creative writer. His first work was The Eeks Trilogy, which uses speculative fiction to explore questions about Humanity's essential nature and likely future. All three books are now available in a single volume entitles Goldiloxians. His next book was HM4MEN - a light-hearted manual on household management for men.He has completed a fourth novel called Bobby Shafter, set in 1950s Britain, which was published conventionally by Elephant House Press and is now available (for a sixth of the price) as an e-book. John's latest book is Farley's Bend, the sequel to Bobby Shafter, set three years later.

Book preview

HM4MEN

John Standingford

A Manual of Household Management for Men

Published by John Standingford at Smashwords

Copyright 2016 John Standingford

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

Bathrooms

Bed-Making

Boredom

Buttons

Change

Children

Clothes – Management

Clothes – Washing

Cooking

Curtains

Diet

Drinking

Drip-Dry Shirts

Drying Stuff

Dusting

Eggs

Fast Food

Fitted Sheets

Flowers

Food

Freezing

Fridges

Fruit

Gardens

Guests

Hoovering

Housework

Insurance

Invisible Dirt

Invisible Housework

Ironing

Kids

Kitchen Appliances

Kitchen Measures

Kitchen Towelling

Mending Clothes

Minestrone

Moths

Moving Stuff Around

Nudity

Nutrition

Parties

Routine

Rubbish

Salad

Sewing

Shoes

Shopping

Towels

Trash

Tumble-Drying

Underwear

Utilities

Vacuuming

Visitors

Wardrobe

Washing-Up

Watering

Wax Polishing

Windows

Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other Books by John Standingford

More and more men are finding themselves in 1-person households, either through misfortune or by design, without the necessary household management (HM) skills. This book is for them.

Clicking on any of the above topics will take you by hyperlink to that section of the book. In some cases there will be a further hyperlink to another topic. In all cases there will be a hyperlink back to the Contents page.

There will be at least one further edition of this book incorporating readers' suggested additions and amendments. Please email your suggestions to the author at [e-mail].

Introduction

Men and women are different. That's why Dr John Gray called his book 'Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus'. More and more research shows that the old jokes and stereotypes are true. Women really are better at languages and multi-tasking. Men really are better at parking and reading maps.

What about household management? That's not a case of either gender being better than the other, but they're certainly different. My wife (whom I shall call 'Mary') makes the bed every day and places cutlery randomly in the dishwasher. I never make beds and I place all the knives in the first compartment with their handles uppermost, forks in the next, then the desert spoons, the soup spoons, the teaspoons... In fact, in every aspect of household management that I can think of we do things differently.

Neither Mary nor I want to take sole responsibility for managing our house, so we share the tasks and we respect each other's funny ways. But we are not equal partners. When the chips are down and push comes to shove, Mary's in charge. When we are expecting guests and Mary says, We'll have to clean the toilet, I no longer say, But it's not dirty.

But what if Mary took it into her head to run off with her personal trainer, or joined a travelling circus? How would I cope? This is exactly the predicament that many, many men find themselves in, and most of them are woefully ignorant about household management – which from now on I will abbreviate to HM. Suddenly faced with having to do things that have hitherto been little more than background noise in their lives, many throw up their hands and do one of three things:

Find another woman.

Hire a cleaner.

Go home to Mum and Dad, especially Mum.

This book opens up a fourth possibility:

Do it yourself.

Most men have only ever experienced one kind of HM – the kind that women practise. This unassuming little book describes another kind.

I originally thought of structuring the book in chapters, but that just didn't work. Then I remembered the best book on management that I've ever read: 'Up The Organisation' by Robert Townsend, published in 1970. Robert Townsend set out his thoughts in 97 short sections arranged in alphabetical order from 'Advertizing' to 'Wear Out Your Welcome'.

You can read the book sequentially if you like, or just look up subjects as they become relevant to you.

Bathrooms

When you start sharing a bathroom with a woman it suddenly seems smaller. There will be no room for medicines in the medicine cabinet. Drawers, cupboards and horizontal surfaces (shelves, vanity units, cistern covers