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At Grandma Leah's holiday table, we saw our reflections in the polished cutlery and serving dishes. When Great Aunt Fanny died the neighbors crowded into her bedroom to marvel at her flawlessly arranged drawers. A cousin once balked at the rust stains in my kitchen sink and begged me to let her bleach them out.

My mother is so fastidious, the sheets and towels in her linen closet are tied in bundles with ribbon. Pencils bounce off the tight drum of her hospital-cornered sheets. And feel free to eat a meal off her kitchen floor.

Also Today The way we clean now Is "Home Comforts," the new bestseller on housecleaning, an essential reference work or a scary sign of anti-feminist backlash? By Laura Morgan Green Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House By Cheryl Mendelson Scribner, 884 pages, Nonfiction

But the diva of all dust-busters was my mother's mother. Every summer, Rose was on her knees on a rubber pad sanitizing the porch floor of the cottage we rented, then making her way down the stairs, still on her knees, cleaning each one as she went. Her counters glistened. Her mirrors were fingerprint-free. She came after us with a broom if she caught us on her Victorian velvet sofa.

I am the aberration in this gene pool.

I inherited the sofa that Rose kept in perfect condition for 40 years. Within a year, the upholstery was tattooed with cat pee.

My early indifference to housekeeping wasn't entirely a case of rebelling against the fascism of my family's all-consuming pursuit of cleanliness. I just had other things on my mind. Given the option of busing a dish or reading, I always read. Staying up late arguing about art, literature and politics captured my imagination more than cleaning the refrigerator. Traveling whenever time and money allowed won out over battling mildew.

Despite myself, I was well-trained. As the blush of post-college freedom paled, I started to care more about a clean, welcoming home. Stocked cupboards, freshly made beds and organized closets filled me with a sense of peace. When I married, I received all manner of domestic utensils and tucked into home life with a vengeance.

The problem is, while I now cherish a clean apartment, I still lack the attention span for serious cleaning. No matter how often I de-scuzz the vegetable bin, wash the baseboards or pull hair from the tub drain, I never do it as frequently or as thoroughly as my grandmothers did. I will never meet the standards set by the women of my clan.

Maybe that's why Cheryl Mendelson's 884-page compendium of household hints and sociological observations, "Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House," reads like an encyclopedia-size slap on the wrist.

I began reading accounts of this doorstop-size tome even before it came out in November. The idea of a contemporary book about keeping house both inspired my contempt (no one could best the education I received) and filled me with dread (here would be published evidence of how I've failed to live up to my training). Perversely, I succumbed to reading it. I came away impressed by its cleaning and organizing tips and its detailed research, but disgusted by its morally superior tone.

Mendelson heads up the book with a smug treatise on the virtues of homemaking guaranteed to make anyone who doesn't change the sheets twice a week feel inadequate. She follows with an exhaustive catalog of everything you need to know to run a household. Seventy-two chapters are divided into eight sections, with titles such as "Carefully Disregarding Care Labels" and "Peaceful Coexistence With Microbes." They read like a to-do list posted by my grandmothers from the grave.

Next page | I can out-fold Cheryl Mendelson