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ISBN: 9781615190027
Published: September 15, 2009
Price: $14.95 US / $22.95 CAN
Paperback: 240 pages
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How to Get Things Really Flat
Enlightenment for Every Man on Ironing, Vacuuming and Other Household Arts
by Andrew Martin
 

Perfectly pitched to strike some raw nerves: A witty, often surprising manifesto about how and why men should do housework—and a very useful guide for both the millions of men who shirk household duties and the women who live with them.

“You might not think that a book about cleaning could be funny but this made me laugh out loud. In the office. During a quiet lunch hour.”
Financial Times

“Obviously my husband will be getting a pristine copy of How to Get Things Really Flat. The author takes his task seriously, but he’s also a funny and fluent writer and this one just might hang around to become an essential reference book as our two young boys grow up.”
Daily Telegraph

“Martin’s lighthearted but quite handy guide looks at the reasons why men don’t help out around the house as much as they ought to and proposes what can be done about that… After reading this offbeat and thoroughly delightful guide to housework, it’s hard to imagine anyone not wanting to give this stuff a try. Martin does what your mother never could: he makes doing chores seem fun, exciting, and rewarding.”
Booklist

“I was afraid that this was going to be another one of those tiresome blokes-are-crap-at-housework books, but it’s a strange delight, disarmingly written. Andrew Martin is lyrical about the vacuuming—with a special mention of his favourite attachment, the crevice nozzle—and he gives the low down on feather dusters.”
Sunday Telegraph

“Andrew Martin has launched himself as an unlikely domestic god. His hilarious book is a bloke’s guide to difficult stuff like ironing, dusting, cleaning products and yes, Christmas.”
Daily Mail

“Combining hilarious anecdotes with practical tips from experts about housework for men, it’s debatable whether this is really a gift for him, or you.”
Woman & Home

“Andrew Martin has put together a delightfully amusing tale about the joys and tribulations of doing housework that also serves as a very good primer on how to actually do housework... His main target audience is men. But women, I think, will also find Martin’s observations funny and many of his tips helpful... And if, after laughing your way through Martin's text, you're still not into doing housework, he has a tip for that, too: Hire a cleaner.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune

Andrew Martin is surprisingly well qualified to write a housework guide for men. Not only is he a man himself, but he does a lot around the house. On purely humanitarian grounds he recently took over some of the ironing from his wife; he then branched out into cleaning the bathroom, fairly regular vacuuming, and doing the dishes after dinner (when he wasn’t going out). For the purposes of this book, Martin has interviewed many experts, and can thus provide answers to such burning questions as: Do I need to bother about the controls on the iron? Is dust actually dangerous? What’s all this stuff about hard and soft water? The result is a genuinely enlightening read, combining practical housework advice with touching recollections from the author’s Yorkshire childhood and hilarious scenes from the daily sit-com of family life. How to Get Things Really Flat will amuse and instruct any slobbish man forced at gunpoint to read it.