For a while 'housewife' has been a word with a solidly retro feel, evoking a time of hand-cranked washing machines and a slavish desire to serve martinis to your husband. Nowadays, we have stay-at-home mums with packed calendars and their own personal trainers. But the word is slipping into our vocabularies again, championed by women writing homemaking manuals and online blogs devoted to art of domesticity.

The internet is awash with it. Posts are devoted to 'How to clean like a maid' or 'how to crochet a dishcloth'. Elsewhere, bloggers tell how they have knitted a cashmere hot water bottle cover, baked muesli cookies or cleaned their toilet naturally.

Jane Brocket's blog yarnstorm.blogs.com was so successful it has been turned into a book, out this month, entitled the Gentle Art of Domesticity. Her posts about scones and hand-knitted tea cosies have attracted 38,000 page views a week, according to her publishers. The Housewife's Handbook by Rachel Simhon is also out this month, with two more books - Household Wisdom: Traditional Housekeeping for the Contemporary Home and Ultimate Housewife: The Lost Art of Domestic Perfection - due to be published early next year.

Meanwhile, the BBC has even broadcasted Anthea Turner's Perfect Housewife programme, where the TV presenter reprimands 'lazy' women for their unhousewifely behaviour.

One blog, Retro Housewife, explains the resurgence as a revolt against life’s frenetic pace: "We spent the '80s and the '90s trying to do it all. Now we are tired, overworked and want to offer a different life plan. We want to stay home, take care of our kids, our husbands and give them the attention they deserve."

Housewife’s handbook author Simhon says she believes these women are fighting back after being made to feel guilty about being house proud by feminists.

"In the ‘60s and ‘70s there was a counter movement against domesticity," she says. "Before that, most housework tips were passed on from generation to generation. Now people are slightly fed up they don't know these things.”

Simhon, whose book includes tips on ‘how to fold a fitted sheet’ and ‘how to use the dishwasher’, decided to make it her mission to revive what she sees as the long lost (and much-needed) skills.

And she says the blogs and manuals do not mean we're going retrograde: "Women aren't stuck in the house anymore, intellectually unchallenged and frustrated. The old-fashioned connotation of the word has been eroded," she says.

Despite that, she says she hopes her book will be used in a traditional way: "I hope my book is the sort people will buy when they get married. I know it sounds old-fashioned, and maybe I am."

Braced for the backlash, Simhon need not worry, she'll certainly have supporters on the web, with posts such as one entitled 'I'm gonna cook and then I'm gonna knit and then I'm gonna cook and then I'm gonna knit some more.'

When Jane Brocket's book got an unfavourable review, likeminded homemakers were quick to post messages of support on her blog. One comrade wrote of the reviewer: "Ignore this woman, she is obviously so jealous of your lifestyle, and talent. She is one of these who wants it all, work and a home and family life and she isn't happy with either."

Yet while these housewives might have opted out of the rat race, they're not exempt from the dog-eat-dog mentality. Blogs entitled 'My House Is Cuter Than Yours' suggest that having a perfectly turned out home is as serious an endeavor as that of any feminist corporate raider.

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