
A Dirty Guide to a Clean Home
Housekeeping Hacks You Can't Live Without
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Narrated by:
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Melissa Dilkes Pateras
About this listen
Everything you need to know about laundry, cleaning, and basic home repairs—from the TikTok star who made bluing a thing, showed you how to fold a fitted sheet, and taught you to properly use your (caulk) gun.
“[Melissa Pateras] makes chores enjoyable in her bawdy debut. . . . Doing laundry has never sounded so fun.”—Publishers Weekly
Melissa Dilkes Pateras is the most competent housekeeper, DIY-project master, and home repair genius that you’ve ever fantasized about becoming. When she followed her kids on to TikTok, she discovered a community hungry for her approachable, tongue-in-cheek advice on everything from balls—dryer balls, that is—to why color-coded closets are a spiritual experience. She doesn’t expect you to know what you were never taught, and she doesn’t care about transforming your home into a minimal, beige Instagram post; she simply wants to help make your life easier.
Can housekeeping be fun?
Whether you’re terrified of your laundry pile or have an inner handyperson who’s been longing for their moment, A Dirty Guide to a Clean Home is a joyful all-purpose guide to organizing, cleaning, laundry, repairs, and beyond. As Melissa says, “Your home shouldn’t be your adversary.”
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2024 Melissa Dilkes Pateras and Carla Sosenko (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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A Monk's Guide to a Clean House and Mind
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For Buddhist monks, cleaning well is a cardinal skill and, in A Monk's Guide to a Clean House and Mind, listeners will discover their never-before-shared cleaning pro tips. From cleaning up everything from your kitchen sink, toilet, and that pile of unidentified stuff in the corner of your garage to your mind, body, and spirit, this book will guide you in creating a home environment that will calm your thoughts and nourish your soul.
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Critic reviews
"Pateras, who dispenses housekeeping tips on TikTok, makes chores enjoyable in her bawdy debut. . . . The plentiful tips are often surprising. . . . Other ‘hacks’ are simple yet clever. . . . Throughout, Pateras’s ribald humor animates the advice (‘I love balls . . . in my dryer,’ she writes on preferring dryer balls to dryer sheets). Doing laundry has never sounded so fun."—Publishers Weekly
What listeners say about A Dirty Guide to a Clean Home
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- S. Hunt
- 04-12-24
So much insight
Great book for anyone interested in taking good care of themselves as well as the environment they surround themselves in.
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- Casey Higgins
- 08-25-24
Humorous and Helpful
Super helpful for keeping (a better) house, and plenty of little snickers and giggles along the way.
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- Heather
- 09-07-24
Couldn't get past the judgmental introduction
I'm not even kidding. I was so sad to start listening to the book only to hear so much judgment from someone I really liked prior to this.
The author is talking about those cheesy signs people have in their homes, and starts talking sh!t about the one that says "Please excuse the mess, we're making memories." She says "I hate that sign. It's the worst quote ever. 'Please excuse the mess, we're making memories?' No you're not, at least not good ones. You're living in chaos and those are the memories you're making. I hate the idea that you can't be making memories while also keeping a neat home."
I quit listening right there. I hate the idea that anything other than her definition of neat and tidy is considered by her to be "chaos." I've followed this writer for a few years now, and I was SHOCKED at how judgmental that is. For every child she claims is living in "chaos," there are kids who are living in "neat" homes and the parents are more obsessed with keeping things clean than being there for their kid. That doesn't mean I think that everyone who keeps a neat home is that way.
Someone living in a home that isn't perfectly neat and clean every second isn't "chaos" and I'm sad that this author decided to start her book this way.
I'm really sad that this is how she decided to start her book. So judgmental and just flat inaccurate.
Melissa, people can have a little bit of mess and not have it be "chaos" and creating "bad memories."
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