Book review: Done and Dusted by Stephanie Zia

Done and Dusted: The Organic Home on a Budget, by Stephanie Zia, ticks a lot of boxes at Golightly Towers. It’s a well-written, well-researched ebook full of a variety of interesting ideas to help you keep your house clean and healthy with a minimum of fuss and toxic chemicals. I was partly expecting it to be yet another ‘lemons and white wine vinegar’ kind of book, but it’s actually full of interesting new ideas and products such as good quality microfibre cleaning cloths, and so on.

The best parts of the book for me were the chapters on cleaning tips, such as general time-saving ideas, laundry products, toxic chemicals in the average home, humane pest control, kitchen and bathroom hygiene, and a comprehensive stain removal guide. There’s also an excellent long section towards the end of the book where the author includes many of her newspaper ‘agony aunt / cleaning guru’ Q&As.

If I absolutely had to find fault with this book, I could perhaps say that the small section about nutrition doesn’t sit very well with the subject matter that surrounds it. It’s nicely written and obviously is a subject that has great personal meaning to the author, but I suspect it might be better as a separate article or even as a different book. This niggle is very minor though, and other readers may disagree.

To sum up: I would recommend this ebook to anyone as a handy, expert and detailed reference on household management and cleaning. It is also reasonably priced.

Done and Dusted by Stephanie Zia is available from Blackbirdebooks, price £4.69 (includes VAT), and also from the Apple iBookstore.

 *****

COMPETITION TIME!! We have a copy of Done and Dusted to give away to one lucky winner. It’s open to anyone who has a valid email address, including those outside the UK. All you have to do is answer the following question by leaving the correct answer in the comments box below. Winner will be drawn at random at noon on Friday, 14^th of May.

 The question is: Which newspaper is Stephanie Zia the Cleaning Guru for?

 Good luck!