More and more marriages are breaking up and more and more single people are forced to live alone when their parents die, move into retirement villages or disappear over the horizon in camper vans. This causes only minor inconvenience to women, who have innate knowledge of household management, but it can be devastating for many men.
My latest book is meant to help these men. It’s called Household Management for Men, snappily abbreviated to HM4MEN. Here’s the cover, which I bought as a generic design from SelfPubBookCovers.com/anikokerekes and customised:
Do you like it?
Like my other books, HM4MEN is published as an e-book only, for sale at US$1.99 at all the major e-book retail platforms (Amazon/Kindle, Apple/iBooks, Smashwords, Kobo, Barnes&Noble etc). Here are some links to click on if you want to buy it:
Amazon Australia Amazon Brazil Amazon Canada Amazon France Amazon Germany Amazon India Amazon Italy Amazon Japan Amazon Mexico Amazon Netherlands Amazon Spain Amazon UK Amazon USA
To whet your appetite, here’s the first page or so…
Introduction
Men and women are different. That’s why Dr John Gray called his book ‘Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus’. More and more research shows that the old jokes and stereotypes are true. Women really are better at languages and multi-tasking. Men really are better at parking and reading maps.
What about household management? That’s not a case of either gender being better than the other, but they’re certainly different. My wife (whom I shall call ‘Mary’) makes the bed every day and places cutlery randomly in the dishwasher. I never make beds and I place all the knives in the first compartment with their handles uppermost, forks in the next, then the desert spoons, the soup spoons, the teaspoons… In fact, in every aspect of household management that I can think of we do things differently.
Neither Mary nor I want to take sole responsibility for managing our house, so we share the tasks and we respect each other’s funny ways. But we are not equal partners. When the chips are down and push comes to shove, Mary’s in charge. When we are expecting guests and Mary says, “We’ll have to clean the toilet,” I no longer say, “But it’s not dirty.”
But what if Mary took it into her head to run off with her personal trainer, or joined a travelling circus? How would I cope? This is exactly the predicament that many, many men find themselves in, and most of them are woefully ignorant about household management – which from now on I will abbreviate to HM. Suddenly faced with having to do things that have hitherto been little more than background noise in their lives, many throw up their hands and do one of three things:
- Find another woman.
- Hire a cleaner.
- Go home to Mum and Dad, especially Mum.
This book opens up a fourth possibility:
- Do it yourself.
Most men have only ever experienced one kind of HM – the kind that women practise. This unassuming little book describes another kind.
I originally thought of structuring the book in chapters, but that just didn’t work. Then I remembered the best book on management that I’ve ever read: ‘Up The Organisation’ by Robert Townsend, published in 1970. Robert Townsend set out his thoughts in 97 short sections arranged in alphabetical order from ‘Advertizing’ to ‘Wear Out Your Welcome’.
You can read the book sequentially if you like, or just look up subjects as they become relevant to you.
StroppyGit 