Week 27: Patty Fairfield and Patty at Home

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Patty Fairfield and Patty at Home, by Carolyn Wells

The Patty Fairfield series dates from the early 1900's. There are about seventeen of them, and I read the first two, which are really all about housekeeping. Patty is 14 and motherless, and her doting father sends her to live with various relatives for a year so that she can learn about how different people live and about proportion in housekeeping. The first house is too ostentatious, the second too intellectual, the third too chaotic and careless, and the last is just right. It's the Goldilocks of housekeeping! Patty loves all her relations, but everyone is most comfortable and happy in the last home.

In the second book of the series Patty is 15 and setting up housekeeping for herself and her father. They buy a house, furnish it, and Patty learns through experience how to keep in proportion herself.

They're fun books to read if you like those old-fashioned series and details about life 100 years ago. I believe the rest of the series has much less housekeeping and much more travel and romance. I downloaded them free from the Kindle store and it looks like the whole series is there, but I think I've had enough of Patty for the moment.

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