New Books | "Green This! Volume One: Greening Your Cleaning"

"Green This! Volume One:

Greening Your Cleaning"

by Deirdre Imus

Simon & Schuster, $15.95

While Don Imus is sorting through the broken pieces of his career, his wife has a somewhat loftier goal: She is trying to save our lives.

Her latest effort, "Green This!," is not what you'd call a pretty book. There are no photos, no colors, no snappy graphic enhancements.

Which seems perfectly fitting. Because her text is not exactly pretty, either.

In her effort to help us all clean more consciously and live less chemically, Imus, a green expert and activist, outlines every potentially toxic ingredient in every cleaning product in your house. And there are many.

Then she lists the health problems associated with them. There are lots of those, too. (Disclaimer alert: She doesn't back up all of her claims with science, and she admits some of her assertions might be controversial. But they're still scary.)

As it turns out, the chemical-laden cleaners our mothers and grandmothers (and cleaning services) have always relied on just might be killing us.

That's the bad news.

The good news is, Imus offers healthful, natural alternatives for every room of the house, as well as ways to find them. She covers topics as broad as indoor air quality and as specific as choosing the right mop, and includes appendixes listing eco-friendly companies, tips for reading product labels and glossaries.

Even more encouraging, she says, "Green cleaning not only lowers your family's exposure to dangerous chemicals; it saves you money and simplifies your life."

As for us, we plan to simplify by moving into a bubble. A nontoxic, nonchemical, very, very clean bubble.

"How to Live in Small Spaces: Design, Furnishing, Decoration,

Detail for the Smaller Home"

by Terrence Conran

Firefly Books, $29.95

This jumbo journal of small-home living could inspire you to move into your own teensy space — or maybe just to stretch.

Either way, it's clear this concept is growing. With home prices soaring, environmental concerns spreading and open space dwindling, more and more people are living in smaller and smaller houses. On purpose.

Conran's mission is not so much to justify that, but to help those folks meet the challenges of a small space — and to learn how to use every inch to its fullest. Don't just live in a small space, he says, live there happily.

Conran, a designer, teaches from experience — his first decorating project was a 10x12-foot space in London — and his text, tips and "points to consider" are relevant and straightforward.

Nicely illustrated with a wide range of international examples (from Dutch "tree tents" to a tiny studio in Paris), his book peeks into all sorts of little places, demonstrating all that stuff smooshed into his subtitle — and more.

There also is a lovely section on small yards, a chapter on second homes and an in-depth analysis of several small-space "Case Studies."

All combine to irrefutably prove Conran's point: "Size need not inhibit personal expression."

You know, he just might be on to something big here.

"Decorating Without Fear:

A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating the Home You Love"

by Sharon Hanby-Robie

Thomas Nelson, $19.99

We get so many amazingly lovely home books, the not-so-lovely ones really stick out. So in that respect, I guess you could call "Decorating Without Fear" distinctive. But — ouch — not in a good way.

First of all, it's an odd size — too small to dress up the coffee table, too big to tuck in your back pocket while you troll paint stores. But mostly, it's the artwork that dooms it. Lots of photographs, sure, but they're oddly angled, strangely cropped and poorly lighted. It's like somebody used the "insert clip art" feature and called it a day.

To make things worse, the "before and after" photos are like a bad "Spot the 8 Differences" game — in one set, we actually had to read the captions to discern that it was the wall paint (and the wall paint only) that had changed.

There's also a goofy close-up of a rose in a vase (Caption: "A single rose creates a heady scent for this Moroccan dining room," as if we could smell the flower, or tell it's in a Moroccan room), right across from one of an apple pie ("Inhale deeply — I'll bet you can smell the delicious aroma ... ." Well, no, we can't.)

The text veers toward goofy, too. ("Color can be blissful or energizing. I prefer blissful for a bath.") And some of the chapters' "Now Do It Yourself" sections are not so much step-by-step instruction as one big idea after another (1. "It's time to write a mission statement for your house." 2. "Design each room to fulfill its mission.")

Hanby-Robie is a designer, and her goal here is to demystify the design process, helping us to identify our own personal style; use textures, colors and lighting; solve "problem" areas; and make every room beautiful and functional.

But frankly — eek! — this book has kind of scared us off the concept.

Compiled by Sandy Dunham, Seattle Times desk editor