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The return of the domestic goddess

Friday, September 11, 2009

The rise of the domestic goddess is returning to Australian households as women are getting back to basics and rediscovering traditional activities like painting, knitting, sewing, cooking and gardening.

An increasingly difficult economic climate, concern for health and wellbeing and environmental issues are inspiring the click-click of those knitting needles, the mending of old clothes rather than buying new ones, cooking classes and other assorted domestic activities.

In pictures: Celebrity domestic godesses

According to social forecaster AustraliaSCAN, as many as one in three Australians now knits and makes his or her own clothes. David Chalke, social analyst, says that while economic and social factors are primarily to blame for this shift back towards home and family, that people are "discovering there is virtue in not going to the mall and buying a new one, but mending the old one or pulling it apart and remodelling it."

Maybe you're a full-time worker with a penchant for baking scones on the weekend, a high-flying lawyer who attends craft weekends or a mum who likes to make her own kids' clothes or toys? If so, we want to know what your favourite priducts are...

VOTE NOW: Tell us what 'domestic' products you can't do without. Have your say in the Australian Women's Weekly Product of the Year and you could share in over $35,000 in prizes.




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Congrats to all of our winners. The Product of the Year competition is now closed. Winning products will be announded December 23.
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