Martha Stewart, whose new book, 'Homekeeping: The Essential Guide for Caring for Everything in Your Home' has just come out from Clarkson Potter, talked to Bethanne Patrick at AOL Coaches about her book:

Is 'Homekeeping' your magnum opus?

Well, in terms of homemaking and homekeeping, yes. It took a very, very long time. It's a compilation and encyclopedia of all the hints and tips and information about every room in your house and how to clean it, how to take care of it, how to make it shine and last longer; it?s a very practical and easy-to-use book of information.

Why 'homekeeping' rather than 'housekeeping'?

Because we're taking care of our homes. It's not necessarily just the house, and I like to differentiate between a house and home. What we've been trying to do is keep our homes -- we're trying to make our houses homes in the first place and then once they are homes, how to take care of them.

Do people know less about keeping homes than they used to?

I think lots of us are severely behind on taking care of things, because remember, many of the people that are starting new homes right now or are just getting married, they have had parents who both worked. Moms have sort of let us down in the last few years, I think. I learned a lot from my parents because they had the time to teach us a lot of things about the house and about the garden and actually, working mothers relied on their parents to help their kids learn.

What does Martha Stewart think about a Swiffer ??

First, electrostatics brooms are very important for easy maintenance of wooden floors, for example, lamps. And there are lots of modern tools we talk about in the book that certainly make things easier. It works and if it makes the job easier, the task easier, then I'm all for it.

If you don't know anything about homekeeping or about how to clean things, what?s the best place to start? What is the thing you need to learn first?:

I think it's the basics. I think you have to learn how to clean a room. One easy thing to remember is start in one corner by the ceiling and think about the room as four walls, a ceiling and a floor. So it's really six walls and openings -- some of them are windows, some of them are doorways -- and how are you going to approach getting the dust off, the dirt off and cobwebs from the corners. What tools are we going to use? That?s what's covered in this homekeeping handbook.