From refreshing the bathroom to dealing with carpet stains, most cleaning jobs require a certain amount of time devoted to cleaning. However, you don’t have to handle all chores at once, losing numerous hours of cleaning. The smart way to organise your cleaning schedule is to complete a few quick cleaning jobs every day. Check these simple chores here:

• Make the bed – believe it or not, a picture-perfect bed goes a long way to improving the overall looks of your bedroom. No matter the style of the premise, a made bed is the way to keep the space warm and welcoming. Furthermore, it will take you no more than five minutes to make the bed. Deal with the task every morning, so that you can improve the vision of your bedroom and come home to a cosy premise.

• Declutter the hallway – while dealing with all the clutter at once may seem like a time-consuming chore, you shouldn’t declutter the hallway every day. Given the fact that it is items of daily use that are the greatest clutter-makers, take advantage of smart storage solutions to take control over hallway clutter. Shoes, umbrellas, gloves and similar items need to be well-organised in suitable drawers or freestanding baskets so that you can prevent chaos in the hallway. A few decorative hangers, for example, work wonders by minimising clutter and adding extra style in the hallway.

• Run the dishwasher daily – dirty dishes piling up in the kitchen sink certainly is not how a clean kitchen should look like, that’s why you need to take full advantage of your dishwasher. Once ready with your dinner, load the dishwasher with greasy plates and knives and leave it that way until the morning. On the next day run the dishwasher and as the cycle ends, empty the machine to get it ready for the next load of dishes.

• Keep bathroom vanity clean – to enjoy the freshness of your clean bathroom, don’t forget to clean the vanity before you leave the premises in the morning. Keep your brushes and makeup nicely organised in storage baskets and wipe vanity surfaces daily. You can keep a few reusable bamboo cotton cloths in the bathroom so that you wipe surfaces in a flash.

• Get a handheld vacuum – this may look like an investment you are unwilling to make now, yet a light handheld vacuum cleaner will help you to address small messes on time. Instead of dragging your heavy vacuum cleaner with you whenever a tiny accident occurs, purchase a light cordless alternative to save time and effort. Use your new cleaning tool for quick clean-ups like going over high-traffic areas or collecting crumbs after breakfast.

• Take out the trash – you don’t want stinky trash compromising the fresh air in your kitchen, that’s why you should never forget to take out the trash in the morning or after dinner. While completing this chore, give your trash can a quick wipe with an antibacterial wipe to keep germs at bay. To keep the amount of litter under control, you can also put a separate trash can in each room at home – the bedroom, the bathroom or even the home office space.

• Put stuff away – you know that clutter is tough to deal with and to keep it at bay, you need to put your things away once you are done using them. It’s a task concerning mainly stuff of daily use. Make sure your kids are well-familiar with this rule as well, to prevent clutter from appearing.

Remember to address these quick cleaning jobs every day and you will manage to preserve your home sparkly clean for a long time.

© London Domestic Cleaners

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Reading the 1930 & 1959 versions of The Hidden Staircase simultaneously, comparing differences in the story and characters, and pondering dated plot points. Spoilers: full plot description below!

Artwork Comparison

The changing artwork is part of my fun in collecting these books. Although there are two text versions, the illustrations were updated three times, with the quality deteriorating each time.

Russell Tandy did the first two versions, but the second revision, to save costs on the printing, only included a single frontispiece in a plain paper rather than glossy page, and for this book was an entirely new scene. The book in my collection with this illustration was printed about 1952, but based on Nancy’s hair and clothes, I’m guessing that this illustration was done in the 40’s. Here are an example of the original and revised Tandy illustrations, the first showing Nancy breaking into Jacob’s house, and the second showing Nancy and the rescued Jacob finding his house ransacked and empty:

The illustrations were revised again for the 1959 revised text, but this time by an uncredited artist who had little of Tandy’s talent, and by the 1970’s (for the later volumes in the series) the illustrations look like they were pulled from a reject pile of scribblings. The revised versions all have 6 plain paper line drawings. These revised text illustrations don’t attempt to mirror Tandy’s original work, although they sometimes show a similar scene.

The stormy lake:

The tree blocking the road:

And last, here’s an illustration of my favorite scene in the original, that never would have made it into the revision, where Nancy parks illegally, rushes into a hotel lobby, snatches the phone from the desk clerk, then proceeds to give him orders to start making phone calls for her.   

Index of Posts:

ND3 Reading start

ND3 Reading finish

ND3.0 Overview

ND3.1 1930 Chs 1-3 vs 1960 Chs 1-2

ND3.2 1930 Chs 4-6 vs 1960 Ch 3

ND3.3 1930 Chs 7-9 vs 1960 Chs 4&8

ND3.4 1930 Chs 9-11  vs 1960 Ch 5-7; 9-10

ND3.5 Chs 12-14  vs 1960 Ch 11-12

ND3.6 1930 Chs 14-17 vs 1960 Ch 13-14

ND3.7 1930 Chs 18-21 vs 1960 Ch 15-17

ND3.8 1930 Chs 22-25 vs 1960 Ch 18-20

ND3.9 Artwork comparison

ND3.10 Overall review

Since my father passed away a couple of years ago, I've been slowly reading through all my books that connect us, as a way of remembering him. He took me with him to pick up this book at an author signing. He became a fan after auditing Carroll's Texas History course at Blinn Jr College. I remember him telling me how, as the only old fart in a class full of teenagers, he probably got much more out of it than the kids that were simply getting their required credits out of the way. Knowing my dad, he probably stayed after every class, BSing with the professor and probably making him late for supper on the regular. My dad did love to tell tales, and he had a passion for local and family history.

About the book: This book is intended to be used as supplemental reading for middle school Texas History classes, and it does it very well, given the constraints. It uses simple language in a direct, storytelling style, meant to both entertain and to reinforce historical facts. The scope is broad enough to satisfy diversity requirements and the prose carefully dances around the kind of scientific and historical facts that tend to annoy the bible thumpers, nationalists, and alt-righters that populate the state textbook selection committee and various schoolboards. I do wish he'd cited his sources for historical fact, or at least provided a reference list at the back, in addition to the facilitator's guide.