Upkeep

This post comes a little late but well! these days I just try to squeeze as much time as possible. Home straightening is going on, but along with that the preparations are on for my son's 7th birthday. Mix all that with the lousy teacher discussions with the school friends' moms and then follow ups with the academic head, and you get a great 'Khichdi'.

 Anyways, These days I am upto a challenge with myself and all the other GREAT goings as mentioned above. Continual upkeep of the home. As I have mentioned, some of the areas of my home are in a mess, but still there are some which are clean and mess free. My challenge is to keep them tidy and clean at all times. I am not there 100% yet for all the areas, but I can say, I am doing very well is keeping up the master bathroom and kitchen. The appliances are kept sparkling clean and 80% of the tiles are clean. In case you are wondering of the missing challenge , let me tell you that I am not taking any extra time to clean / maintain the cleanliness in these areas. I am just utilizing my time in these areas in an efficient manner. Like, when I am making tea, instead of waiting for the tea to boil, I am cleaning up the cabinet doors and tiles. Similarly, while waiting during my son's bath, the bathroom is getting cleaned up. Absolutely no extra time is being devoted. And it is working...... (so far).

I hope they will say this for me some day....

Sell–> Keep-> Renovate-> Love

 

Hey Friends!!! In case you are wondering about the title of the post, let me assure you that by the end of this post, you will know why it is titled so. This is going to be a long post with lots of pictures….

Whole of march and half of April, our house was in the hands of carpenter or painter. And since, there were places that we could not use much, the accessible places became a mess, specially my son’s room. It is still a mess, but the rest of the house is taking its shape now. Mostly every room has undergone some change , some have minor changes and some have a completely different look. I will talk about the rooms in my later post. But this post, I am specifically dedicating to one piece –> Our TV Wall unit.

Sometime back, I had mentioned about this wall unit, that we wanted to sell. We had actually finalized on the price as well with the buyer (Rs. 3500). One fine day, we called him and told him that he needs to just take it away now that our woodwork was in progress. He responded that he will come in a day or two and will take the piece away. We waited for him for a week, and then he came. He said that he will come back in few hours after arranging for the transport.And then, he did not come back. Meanwhile, we were almost certain that he is either not willing to buy it, or he wants to lower the price. I was fed up of the mess and uncertainty and the dependency on someone. I talked to the carpenter and made a decision to reuse that wall unit.

To remind you, this is the picture of the wall unit.

We have a TV in my in-law’s room, but the wall unit was too much overpowering in that room. It took so much space and the left side shelves were really not that usable. I asked the carpenter to make four parts of this structure. One wall panel, second lower cabinet, third shelves rack, and fourth the corner unit. I have tried to depict the different components of the wall unit explaining what was made into what.

He did that , and lo, we had such amazing pieces of furniture to use. The corner unit was too tall, so I asked the carpenter to put the shelves in between to make a small size corner unit to be placed at the far end of our lobby.

We had a small unused mica sheet left from another project (Study table) and another mica sheet from the new storage almirah, which the carpenter fixed on the unit. This piece now holds our medicines and such stuff. This also gives a much needed pop of red color in this area. This is a closer view.

This is how it looks from the living room.

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I simply love this look and it serves a great function too, an accessible place for medicines.

The second piece is left portion of shelves with the glass door. The carpenter shortened it and made two pieces with one extra shelf. The extra shelf was used in the kitchen, one box serves as bed side table in in law’s room, and three shelves put horizontally and serve as book rack in my son’s room.

 

Remaining were the wall panel and lower cabinet. The wall panel is put on the wall with a small TV, and I got a shelf inserted in the lower cabinet which is now used for seating and inside is a book rack.

 

I am still not done with the uses. There were still a few pieces left. Two big shelves which were used in this console table.(Yes, I got that made too). I will relate the story later.

The crockery unit that we had gotten made, did not have enough shelves to put cups and glasses. So the glass shelf that we got from wall unit, I put that in the unit and wow… we had enough space.

Can you see the extra shelf which has the glasses on it???

The only thing remaining was two small shelves and the glass door. The shelves again went into the kitchen for extra shelving needs in cabinets and the glass door, I got that fixed in the balcony horizontally to hold the smaller and cute looking planters for plants.

This is in its current state. We still have not cleared up the mess from balcony and my son’s room.

After having got all this done, I feel really satisfied . A simple book shelf would cost us Rs. 2000. Even by including the cost of labour , around Rs. 2000 , I feel that we got stuff worth more than 12-15K.

Phew!! That is it from my side today.. For past one and a half months, I have not been writing regularly for my blog. Although, in my head, the posts publish daily. I have written earlier as well that I do intend to go back to writing regularly but something or the other happens and all my commitments go down… So, today I am not committing anything. We’ll see how it goes.

In the end, do you now relate to the title of the post?? Is the title apt?? What do you think of the uses I got out of the wall unit? I would love to know….

Hurray!!!!!!

Finally !I am glad I am writing this post!!The carpenter is out of our house. Now the wood polish and paint work is remaining.. But that will just be a 2-3 days job,once it gets started,hopefully tomorrow! This past one month,I have got so many things done,that I just am not able to understand as to from where should I start narrating. Oh well'! I will just go one by one. The house is still a mess but this is still tolerable. From tomorrow, I will be on organizing spree, and I plan to share all that with you! Oh , did I mention ,I am glad to be back on blogging! And actually, I have already started organizing bits and pieces, and the proof of that - I am blogging from my googlenexus - the tablet. I have charged this tablet after around 8 months! Don't ask me why please!!!!

Phew!! I will just leaveyou With a few pictures of my home in the current state. From tomorrow, I will post about the work/organizing and other stuff.....

Slow and Steady!!!!

Dust, Mess everywhere and still loving it!!! Dont get me wrong! Although now, I am a bit tired of looking at the mess all over at home, I am still loving the feeling that finally  I am getting some concrete and beautiful done and that too to my liking.

I had mentioned in my last post, that we have outsourced the woodwork that we had planned to get done. Although the closet that we wanted was completed in a week, I am coming up with new work for the carpenter almost daily. And so far, we have gotten quite a few things done.The work is in the last stages now, hopefully it should be over by this weekend, provided I dont come up with any new tasks.(wink wink)

Since all that is getting done, the laptop remained hidden for the initial days. Then One fine day, it surfaced and I thought of writing down my post. Then realized, that it was not charged. Looking for the adapter to charge it was going to be a tidious task with a baby in one hand. So, I just let it be.

The reason I am narrating this story is to let you know that although in my head I really did not want any gap in my blogging, but sometimes my laziness, sometimes circumstantial, it just happened.For past few days, all the time I am thinking of the stuff that I want to be done with the residuals, much to the dismay of carpenter.

 I will be back next week (With high hopes) with pictures of my home.

Medicine box

 

In my winter vacation trip, I had mentioned about getting the desired Shelf Liners from the Agra market. And boy, I had got some lovely patterns that time. I was itching to use them over the boxes for quite some time, I just was not getting any chance and time Yesterday, I made the sweet corn soup. And finally decided to use the new soup bowls gifted by my brother on Diwali. As I uncovered the box, the top of that seemed like the perfect container for this mess and this place.

And that is when I decided to release the itch I was facing for days. I selected this cloth (shelf liner) for covering the box.

I just love these liners instead of the wrapping papers because these tend to give a more neat look.

It did not take long for this box to go from the first picture to the second one.

 

The overall look is really neat and all the medicines are corralled in one box at one place. If you are wondering why I did not give the complete picture, Well, there is a very big reason behind it. Sometime back I had mentioned that we are planning to get some wood work done in the shaft window… Finally we have been able to do some progress on that front. We have hired an experienced professional to do the job for us… And right now, we are living in this mess.

The space is open now and waiting for the carpenter to fit in the storage almirah in there. I will blog about this in the coming days once we have all this ready. Actually, since the work had already started on that, this post is coming 8 days late. This box was done last tuesday, and today only I could blog about it.. No, Its not about being lazy this time, I really just did not get time to charge my laptop and transfer the images and then write a complete post about it.

So, that’s it from me now… Will be back next week…. C’ya….

Organized Linen Closet

 

“I organized my closet once and it has stayed the same ever since” – said no one in this whole wide world.

Seriously, Why can’t the closets remain organized once and for all. When we moved into this apartment, I had set up the linen closet quite nicely and used to feel real proud of that. Past 6 months now, the closet is not the same and yes the feeling too is not the same. Infact, it was so bad, that it was always a struggle to push close the door.

I have been thinking about organizing it for quite some time but u know.. TOO LAZY…. This weekend, something came over me and I decided to shun my laziness. Enough was enough…. I just could not take it any more and jumped into action. First, I took out all the stuff. Once out, the bed was all filled with the sheets and what not.

Can you see my little girl’s head peeping from behind……I was keeping her entertained by playing ‘Peek-a-boo’ during this process.

Then one by one, I took out the sheets / curtains and decided which ones should be kept in the less accessible places which were of one time use or the extra stuff which rarely gets used. All that stuff went in the upper cabinet and left me wondering why the extra curtains and quilt cover were there at the eye level cabinet, whereas the daily use sheets were crammed in between. Oh the days of ‘Will come back to you again…’. The second shelf was dedicated for the extra towels, which I rolled and kept for easy access. Finally the lower shelf housed the bed sheets. I put the bed sheet and one pillow case nicely folded in the second pillowcase. And kept this packet sideways nicely tacked. One over the other bed sheets just does not work because then it is a pain to take out the lower stacked sheets.

Here is the final picture…

Can you believe, except for one crocheted without sleeve jacket, it is the same stuff that was there earlier. Now, everything is nicely lined, the door closes easily and the closet is nice to look at.

I do have vision of rearranging this closet with sheets hanging instead of stacking sideways in order to make use of the vertical space. I am still going through the ideas in my head. May be, once I have it sorted out myself, I will come to this closet again, but for now, this is functioning well.

How do you keep your linen closet organized? What are the tricks that you follow? Do you have any ideas to share as to how to use the vertical space for hanging sheets?

Wait over!

 

Remember my post regarding this tiered rack? The website had mentioned that it will take 14-15 days. Well, it didn’t. It took just 7 days… I received the rack day before yesterday and I sprung into action right away. I was so excited that I did not even take the before picture. Bad blogger that I am!!! But the after picture of course, is here…

The spice cabinet was really in a bad shape. This kind of an organizer is perfect for such cabinet because all the jars are visible properly and no jar is lost in the back. I really do like this organizer and the way it has fitted in the space. Oh! and btw, I received two racks. One is still sitting on the counter,waiting to be put in to use.

How do you organize your spice cabinet? Do you use any organizers / racks? Do you prefer open cabinet instead?