Appeles us'd to paint a good housewife upon a snayl; which intimated that she should be as slow from gadding abroad, and when she went she should carry her house upon her back; that is, she should make all sure at home.
The united, well-ordered American home is one of the greatest contributing factors to the preservation of the Constitution of the United States.
I'm having trouble managing the mansion. What I need is a wife.
Learn how to regulate one's own house well.
Family: A social unit where the father is concerned with parking space, the children with outer space, and the mother with closet space.
If a woman is not fit to manage the internal matters of a house, she is fit for nothing, and should never be put in a house or over a house, any way. Good housekeeping lies at he root of all the real ease and satisfaction in existence.
Next to the dog, the wastebasket is your best friend.
[On husband Phil Donahue:] The man does not know the meaning of the word tidy. He asked me one day, 'Where are my shoes?' So I asked him, 'Where are my shoes?' I don't know what it is about men. They think that women have radar attached to our uteruses.
My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.
Run a home like you would a small business and treat it with the same seriousness.
You gotta fight. You gotta get out the negative energy. Don't let it build up. You end up screaming at each other over something totally stupid, like, 'Well, why'd you put this spoon in this drawer then?' 'Just to p-s you off, that's why! I got spoons hidden all over this house! Keep it up, and your napkin rings are gonna start disappearing.'
For a single woman, preparing for company means wiping the lipstick off the milk carton.
Good closets make for a good marriage.
That's silly talk... Talk to my wife. She'll tell me I need to learn to just put my socks on the hamper.
But I never cleaned thoroughly enough, my reorganization proved to be haphazard, the disgraces came unfailingly to light, and it was clear how we failed, how disastrously we fell short of that ideal of order and cleanliness, household decency which I as much as anybody else believed in.
Pick up your clothes. I am not your maid. How do I know this? A maid cannot kill you with a tube sock. I can.
I don't know why no one ever thought to paste a label on the toilet-tissue spindle giving 1-2-3 directions for replacing the tissue on it. Then everyone in the house would know what Mama knows.
I buried a lot of my ironing in the back yard.
When I go on vacation, I leave my house in total order: bills paid, garbage out, no milk in the refrigerator, mail done so that I can better negotiate what will await me.
My life has been in shambles, like my personal relationships, my laundry, paying bills now I have someone who pays my bills and it's always been a challenge because it overwhelms me.
I'm a total failure at housewifery. I always have been, 'cause I daydream too much. If I start doing the dishes at one in the afternoon, I'll still be there at six in the evening.
My wife, she likes to have things uncluttered, and if something is missing, then one has to be very careful not to ask her if it was thrown out - you have to ask her simply where it might be.
Whatever we can’t hold, we hang on a hook that will hold it.
If you were to hire household staff to cook, clean, drive, stoke the fire, and answer the door, can you imagine suggesting that they not talk to each other, not see what each other is doing, not coordinate their functions?
Being home is like a vacation to me, so I'm trying to get my home together.
