Clutter: An Untidy History by Jennifer Howard

Author:Jennifer Howard [Howard, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781953368096
Google: Wi9ZzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Published: 2022-01-04T23:20:47.370953+00:00

The Beecher sisters’ manual and Isabella Beeton’s blockbuster stand as two of the most famous examples of what was (and still is) a thriving market for domestic-economy books, though marketers wouldn’t use the term today. The Schlesinger Library, part of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, maintains an extensive collection of 19th-century advice manuals. A search for “household management” turns up 433 entries, including various editions of Mrs. Beeton’s book, but less-famous alternatives and competitors abound, published in both the UK and the United States.

I pulled together a few favorites, omitting some of the lengthy descriptive subtitles that spell out every subsection and category of domestic life covered in each book:

The complete home: an encyclopedia of domestic life and affairs, by Julia McNair Wright (1879)

First principles of household management and cookery: a textbook for schools and families, by Maria Parloa (1882)

Miss Corson’s practical American cookery and household management, by Juliet Corson (c. 1885)

Mrs. Parker’s complete housekeeper: a system of household management for all who wish to live well at a moderate cost, by Eliza R. Parker (1888)

The 19th- and early-20th-century popularity of such domestic advice books feels very contemporary. Over the decades, though, the “Waste-not, want-not” ethos behind them got lost in the consumerist race to accumulate.

As historian Susan Strasser explains in Waste and Want, much of the early advice aimed at housekeepers focused on how to make the most use of limited resources. “Without trash collectors or much cash for purchases, most nineteenth-century American women had to make do with whatever was at hand instead of solving problems with products,” she writes. “Books of advice for farm women and urban housekeepers were full of ideas for using stored materials.”

Coal ashes, corncobs, even tea leaves could be put to good use. (Used tea leaves would “brighten the looks of a carpet, and prevent dust.”) What would a 19th-century housewife make of contemporary clutter? The current emphasis on purging and discarding excess items would likely appall a reader of 19th-century advice manuals.

I see glimmers of hope in the recent popularity of the mantra “Reduce, reuse, recycle.” Even though it’s deployed most often by relatively affluent and eco-conscious consumers, who have the means and time to put it into practice, it points the way to reclaiming the “Waste not, want not” spirit that animated much of the counsel shared by Mrs. Beeton and her contemporary advice mavens. Yesterday’s thriftiness has become today’s sustainability.

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