(Re) Organized Linen Closet

 

This is actually an update of my previous linen closet organization post. I had mentioned in that post of a probable reorganization. Earlier, when I had organized the linen closet, I had put the sheets sideways. In fact, that was the only way I could have arranged the sheets.

About a month and a half back, when our home renovation got over, we had an extra storage space to hold sarees and suits. I grabbed that opportunity to move out the ONCE IN A WHILE use suits / sarees / coats to that storage space (Post on that coming soon) and had a brand new space to hold the sheets.

I wanted to hang the bedsheets in order to have easy accessibility. I have not seen it anywhere, and I was not even sure if that would work or if that would look good. I took out all the sheets, and folded the sheets like this.

Then put the sheet in a hanger. All this took about 15-20 minutes for all the sheets. But the result was amazing.

The closet looked beautiful with hanging sheets. The sheets are easily accessible. I folded the pillow covers nicely and put on the shelf.

Here is the picture of the closet..

And this is the picture of previous linen closet holding the towels and the lower shelf housing the cover sheets.

Here is a correction to my first statement of this previous linen organization post :

“I arranged my linen closet about a month and a half back and it has remained organized since”.

Honestly, I am so very happy about it. And this is a statement that I had never expected to make. But this has been so amazing, so beautiful, so hassle free, so accessible and so easy to maintain. Any such organization which is easy to maintain and easy to use is a winner in my dictionary.

How do you keep you sheets organized?

Daily Maintenance is the key!!

 

Good Morning Friends! This post has been pending for last four days. Every now and then, I would get involved in something or the other so just could not post it. Last weekend was pretty hectic for us and jam packed with few outside ventures with a family visiting us. The visit was informed to us just a day in advance which gave me the opportunity to apply the Lesson Learnt! 

For past one month, our house has been relatively clean. I say relatively, because it is not sparkling clean all the time, but still now it is presentable at all times. I feel so nice while writing this post because this has been possible by adopting one good habit – Daily pickup and cleanup.

About a month back, I had challenged (Read forced) myself to dust the house before going to bed everyday.  Why before going to bed – you ask???? Well::

Am I right or am I right?

So before going to bed was the perfect time to get to cleaning. No matter, how clean / bad it might seem, I would still dust it, with damp microfiber cloth. There were two advantages to it.

One – Since I was dusting at night, right before going to bed, no one would come interrupt, and that time, the house would get picked up too.

And secondly – In the morning, we would wake up to a clean and ordered house (because I put the things in their respective places at the time of dusting).

I did not blog about this habit, because I wanted to wait to ensure that this is going to become a habit. And I am happy to report that this surely has become a habit for me. There still have been days when I did not dust, but honestly, the next day, it still did not look bad.

I am not using any cleaning products. A simple microfiber cloth and water, that is it. For me, it is working wonders.

Here is what I take up:

Living Room:

Daily : Center Table, two side tables, extra TV unit, console table, TV wall panel.

Weekly / 3-4 days : Photo Frames, inside the media shelf.

Dining Room:

Daily: Dining Table

Weekly / 3-4 days : Crockery Unit

Lobby :

Corner Unit ( Alternate Days)

Son’s room:

Daily: Study Table top, Side Table, Dresser

Weekly / 3-4 days : Book Rack, Study Table shelves

Our Room:

Daily: Wall unit including the folding table, one shelf each day according to the day, both side tables, Bed Back.

Weekly / 3-4 days : Crib between the bars, Photo Frames, Photo Wall Clock.

After about two weeks of doing daily stuff (As mentioned above), I included few more things in this process. I included the photo frames (on random basis – like every 3 –4 days), dusting each and every thing in my son’s room, between the bars in crib, photo frames in master bedroom. Remember the wall unit in master bedroom?? It has 10 shelves in total on both the sides. I put that on my dusting list according to the numbered days. So, on the 1st I would dust the first shelf. on 2nd I would take up 2nd shelf, and so on. Then from 11th, this will repeat. Since I started from the middle of the month, I started from the 5th shelf, but boy! Am I glad I did that… The inside and outside of the wall unit looks so clean now. Every obvious place in the house remains free of dust.

When you are just contemplating doing something, the task does feel daunting. And sometimes, that would make you procastinate and putting off the task. But as is said, Starting is always the difficult part. Once you start, it does not really take that long and does not even feel intimidating. Till the time, I had not started dusting, I used to feel that it is at least an hour job. Add to it the pickup time and I felt it is not doable daily. Oh! How wrong I was! All of this does not take me more than 20 minutes. 15-20 minutes, that is what I put and I get hours of smiles ???? … I’ll take it.

So, this daily task and the ‘Upkeep’ makes the house clean and well maintained. I am glad I have incorporated the daily maintenance in my daily schedule. This is the reason when this weekend when we were expecting company, we were not rushing to cleanup the house top to bottom.

So, this weekend when we entertained our guests, I felt so relaxed because we were not rushing to clean every inch of space in the house. It was mostly clean, just the daily stuff we had to take care of.

What are your daily chores?? I would love to know your daily routine of how you keep your home dust free….

Happy Weekend!!!!

Lesson Learnt!!!

 

‘Atithi Devo Bhava’… This is a common term used in India when it is time to entertain the guests. God visits the homes in the form of guests, and so it is our duty to serve them well – this is the notion behind this phrase. These days, visiting each other’s places has come down. But there is still one occasion, where such visits and staying over happens – The Wedding ceremonies. No marriage is complete without the gathering of relatives. But entertaining and making arrangements for the guests is an art.

I nowhere claim to be an expert in entertaining, in fact, I am learning and am in the nascent stage. I have not single handedly arranged for guests and I have made many mistakes, but a recent encounter with some intolerable mis-arrangements led me to write this post. I was so disappointed with the way no arrangements were done for a gathering of about 15 people. I have learnt a few lessons and would like to go over them.

1) Ensure the bathroom doors get locked properly. I mean this is a basic and very important room where everyone needs privacy. It should get locked even if there are no guests in the home, and when it is a gathering of four families, it definitely has to be taken care of. Three days that we spent at a recent ceremony, we used to make sure that there is someone outside to watch the door so that no one can barge into the ‘Bathroom in use’…

2) Dust your house properly. Now again, this is something that should be done daily or as required, but when people are coming in to stay, make sure everything looks neat and clean and fresh. One should feel relaxed and fresh, not going ‘Ewww.. ‘ for looking at dust in the commonly used area. Finding dust in the master bedroom bedside tables or at the back of bed is certainly not someone expects. Also, washbasins should be cleaned up before the guests arrival. How would you feel if you find dust in and around the washbasins, or the spitups still stuck to the basins… ‘Ewww’… right???

3) Make sure you have enough water daily, both for drinking and washing. Make arrangements, if the water supply or water accumulation in your daily routine is limited. I mean what harm is in there to have an extra bottle of drinking water, just in case, which so happened in our case? Wouldn’t it be thoughtful and a blessing, if there is a camper of water with ice in it for everyone to take chilled water from there, instead of either having normal water or putting ice cubes in the water every time one craves for chilled water in the hot summer afternoon.

4) Oh for God’s sake, ensure there is enough water in and through the taps and BUM GUNS (jet spray) in the bathrooms and toilets. I mean, do I really need to do that? Shouldn’t that be a pre-requisite for a normal day too?

5) If you are preparing for your guests in summers/winters, and if you have ACs/coolers/heaters at home, ensure that each one of them is working properly. I am emphasizing on the bold phrase. I am surely not saying that you need to buy these appliances just for your guests, I am just saying that if you have them, then they should be in working condition. Runtime failures do happen, and there is no fixing that, but ensuring timely service of these appliances can minimize the risk.

I do understand that mistakes do happen and there is more often than not, one thing or the other overlooked at. But the things that I have mentioned above, are the things which should be taken care of in the normal day to day life and living. These are not the things which take a lot of money to get fixed,  but yes, they do need attention and willingness of the home owners.

Above mentioned were the situations that we found very irritating and frustrating. I promised myself that I would not let my guests go through such kind of problems, at least not the expected ones. These are the things which are basic to one’s life and hygiene which I will make sure do not happen in my household. Writing this post took me almost a year back, when we had gone for my brother’s wedding. There I found something very pleasing and would like to add to my list of ensuring.

There were 30+ guests staying at my parent’s place for that wedding. Four-rooms were accommodating them and few were at nearby neighbor’s place. My mom made a small basket for each family comprising of a soap, a shampoo and conditioner satchet, a small oil bottle, small lotion bottle, a small comb and a small toothpaste. Each family on arrival was given this. I found this so charming and so thoughtful. That is something I do want to incorporate when we entertain our guests.

This has become a long post. And let me tell you, the first time I wrote this post, it was all cribbing about the issues. But I made sure to sleep over the post, and now in the morning I have written this post right from scratch and gave a twist to the episode and made it a lesson learnt.

What do you normally do to ensure a pleasant stay of your guests? The issues that I have mentioned, do you feel I am overreacting to them? Have you ever faced any such frustrating issues?

Our Living Room

Hi Friends!!!

This post has been pending since long. Last two months, we were busy with the carpenter and then the painter. Now that all that is settled, I wanted to do a post for each room one by one. And it seems, today is the day to start with the living room. Let me give you the old photograph which shows what we had in the beginning.

The fabric on the sofa was so dark, I never liked it. But that was something that we lived with for almost 8 months.

We had a wall unit for TV which was almost 6 yrs old, and was in a pretty good condition.But this TV unit just did not give 'The Look' in this living area. It took up so much space, and the side shelf units, although had a pretty good storage capacity, did not make any sense in the living room.
So, then we started with measuring and finalizing on the design and aesthetics of sofa. We decided to get made seven seater sofa (3+2+2) and two puffs in order to accommodate a good gathering. Fabric selection took the most time. We wanted to have a square center table(coffee table) to go with the sofa but were not sure of the design. And then, one fine day, I decided on a design which made use of our old coffee table too.
It took us time, but now finally what we have is what we like. In addition to changing what we had, I wanted to add in some side tables and accessories to the room. We are still lacking the accessories, but the other tables we were able to add to our liking. I added one console table to the mix as well. Now come the pics of the changed room.

The wires that you see around the TV are just temporary. Our TV crashed three times in last four months. It seemed like the life of TV was over. So had to buy a new TV this weekend. The TV installation guy from company is yet to arrive, may be today. Once he installs this TV on the panel, the wires will be gone.

It seems so open, so airy and so accommodating now in the living room. Everything seems to have a place We still need to accessorize the place, but that would be a work in progress. As and when we find something suitable, we'll add. The old TV stand that you see in changed room pic in corner, that is again going to be a changeover piece of furniture. There will be a post on that very soon. 

Do you like the changed look? What kind of changes have you taken up around your house???