The Domestic Bloggess

Finally a proper post.

22 Nov 2009 Leave a Comment

by Sam in Uncategorized Tags: domestic, links

After some domestically busy weeks I’ve finally had a moment to turn my attention to this little patch of web. If you peruse the SUBLIME page you’ll see that I’ve got all my links, blogs, and basically damn useful sites up, and listed with descriptions. I would genuinely love to hear any new ideas and sites I should look at. Anything from the hideously practical to the sublimely beautiful is appreciated.

After blogging for years it feels very strange to be starting again. There’s too much blank page where the older posts should be; there aren’t enough ‘tags’ in the cloud. It all makes me feel terribly self conscious. And, as this is a blog-with-purpose rather than an amble through my life or running ‘career’ I feel I should start with some information.

Why Domestic Bloggess?

Well after Nigella the pun just seemed too good not to use. I am not, and seriously doubt I ever will be, a Domestic Goddess. But I have a genuine abiding interest in all things domestic. I think I might be well equipped to run a household. I’ll happily read around the subject (as there are great books out there – to be discussed at length in later posts) and seem to remember quite random details which help to make life run a little more smoothly. I’m interested in ergonomics in a domestic setting; and in finding solutions – with the world at our fingertips now the answers really are there, it’s just a case of looking (in the right places).

Despite a great eduction and parents who pushed academic options (which I took up for many years) I think that domesticity is in the genes. My grandmother ran a bed and breakfast/ guesthouse, as did my mother when I was small. The idea of making somewhere ‘nice’ for others is in the blood. I’m just lucky that I’m doing it for friends and family! My mother had been brought up to clean. She hoovered every day (we had cats, but it was not necessary every day) and I lived in the tidiest house I was ever in as a child. (It must have been a ray of light through the clouds when I turned from a hideously untidy child into an immaculately organised teenager… unluckily for her my behaviour and demenour meant she still had to deal with an hellion most of the time, just a tidy hellion.)

As she cleaned she would be looking after me, giving me small jobs (dust the edge of the stairs, polish the copper floor plate round the fire); and also talking. The talking was a constant stream of information about why she was doing certain things in certain ways. These methods and routines had been honed by generations of interiors specialists (housewives). The orders and ideas are still all the ‘basic’ methods of cleaning. The cloths and chemicals might change, or they might not; but the actions and routines remain over the years. I mean really, how many ways could there be to clean a room?

This gave me a good basic grounding and when I moved into my own place I used the same methods and routines (albeit a little less disciplined). Over the years the location changed and with it the challenges changed too. I’ve lived in a small tenement flat, a 1970s bungalow extrodinaire, an old higgeldy-piggeldy place and now a classic Edinburgh Tenement. All of these places were very different; all needed work, all needed love and ALL needed care and cleaning.

I’m beginning to realise that it sounds like all I want to talk about it cleaning. Even I think that would be too much. It’s all the things that go into making a house that I want to discuss. Building alterations, decoration, furniture, care and maintenance (the most essential of topics), all the crafts that can go into making a house somewhere you want to be at home. Somewhere that regardless of its size or location makes you feel as safe, and as at home, as you can feel.

I’m off for now, to try and craft some less rambling and more focused blog posts. Happy reading.