JAVA/OOPS/Fundamentals in Daily Life

Hey All!
Yes, I know it has been too long for me to post! Somehow last few days, I just wanted to relax, and so, that’s what I kept doing! I have been a bit of blog hopper in those days. I did not open up my blog even once, but was going through other thought provoking blogs which talked about the topics that interest me the most.
Anyways, I will not bore you with the details, rather will come back to the post I intend to write today! Ever since I started this blog, I have been meaning to write about this but I could not gather my thoughts properly. So, last week, when I was doing the tit bits at home, I kind of scolded myself as to why I was procrastinating this post? What is the stuff that I want to gather? May be , I should just write what comes to me in one go, and when I get some other idea, I could write an update… Gud Idea right? Oh! Has it been too much of a suspense now? Sorry pals! I am going to mix personal and professional lives here….
Okay, so let me start now! I am applying my jobs fundas at home. Have you ever experienced that you are wearing, washing, ironing the same clothes again and again? What happened to the shirt that you wore three weeks back, that has never surfaced again? Where is it lost? ahhhhmmm… That is deep down in the laundry basket. The reason it happened ??? You practiced LIFO… Rather you should practice FIFO… No, it is not the name of another football league. FIFO stands for – First in, First out. LIFO stands for – Last in, First out.

The clothes that you put first in the laundry basket, should be the ones to be washed first! First cloth in the laundry basket, should be the first one to be out for washing! Simple !!! So, just practice FIFO in laundry and you will never experience the lost clothes in dirty laundry! And well – This has got nothing to do with java, but this is the one example I found that I can relate to the most in applying my work at home.
The maid came, cleaned the house, took out the garbage, but still you find dirty plates, or broken stuff or garbage at home? It does not look clean enough? Hmm…. May be you did not release your resources properly, so the garbage collector did not pick up the items and released the home of unnecessary stuff… This is the exact statement, one would use at work, if the application works slow. In simple language, If you are not using something, then release it and put in the appropriate place, so that when it is time to cleanup, everyone (including u) knows what stuff is to be thrown out. Makes sense????
Another thing, I have talked about earlier is – FTR – First Time Right… That is not java, just a methodology to follow no matter at work or at home. Whatever you do, do it FTR.
The other day, I was looking for something in the fridge, and was appalled to see, 4 different containers with curd, 4 containers with fruits, kneaded dough in 2 containers, used milk in three glasses. Ufff.. I immediately took a bigger container, and put the fruits together. One bigger container, and dough together, another container and mix milk.(Once the milk is cold enough we can mix). This is a day to day example. But I can relate this to normalization of tables, code optimization. Why take a bigger container and put a small dough ball? Why 2 spoons of curd in a big container which can accommodate half kg curd?? (Really, I am not exaggerating.. but that is how someone at my home works… wink wink)… Ha ha, Actually my MIL works this way. No, I am not criticizing, just different people have different ways of working. Why have same sabzi in different containers? Normalize dear Normalize!! Do not keep the same thing in different places otherwise it becomes difficult to manage. Why put the kadhai itself in fridge in which the dough is kneaded ???? No way !!! These little bits of things, I always relate with Code Optimization. Use the optimum sized boxes for related stuff. Similarly, the medicine box, I don’t prefer to keep it in bedrooms. That has commonly used medicines too, and so should be kept at a common place accessible by everyone (except the kiddo). Right????
Enough of fundas for the day!! Did you relate to any of the stuff I mentioned above? Do you apply any fundas related to your work, at home? I would love to know.

Solution to Laziness

 

Hey All!

I have been too lazy these days. For past few days I just did not feel like cleaning up or sorting the laundry. So the clothes were piling up in the room waiting to be put away. So, what do I do to clean up all the mess???/

Well, I resorted back to my old mantra. Earlier, whenever we lacked the will to clean up our house, we would invite our friends over. No, No, No. Not for them to clean up. But inviting them over for lunch or dinner on a weekend, would give us a deadline by which we just HAD TO CLEAN UP. It seems I work best under pressure. So, that invitation was just the right pressure for us to get to working and get the house sparkle clean.

So, this time I did the same. I called over my friend whose son is my son’s classmate and a very good friend. That invitation built up the right pressure and motivated me and I CLEANED UP.

Oh! Please don’t think bad about me! That’s how I work. UNDER PRESSURE!! MEETING THE DEADLINE. Completing the project well in time before the deadline. And well, That solved the purpose !

What is your solution to the laziness? How do you motivate yourself? Please tell me I am not the only one who gets lazy in cleaning… Or Am I ????

Leftover Wood Reuse!

 

Hi Friends!

Today’s post is completely inspired by a post on ‘www.dressyourhome.in’ post. Laksh today talked about the uses of leftover pieces of wood and that reminded me that although I had planned on this post when I started this blog, I actually never did it. Her post today made me come to reality that I am not being organized about writing my posts in the order they should be. Learn girl, Learn!!!

So, coming to the uses of leftover wood, Remember my post on ‘A Store to Store Stuff’. After that store, we had a few pieces of wood planks left over. I actually wanted to throw them right away and something came over me and I saved those pieces. It had been a few months and one day I was going through some Interiors magazine, Don’t remember the name or the article. What I do remember is, that there was some statement like – Stop saying that you don’t have a space in your home for something. Look around, create space. Creating space does not mean breaking walls, it means to look and think outside the box. Look for spaces where you would never think of doing something, and you will find a space which is perfect for your needs. This statement touched the right bells in my head, and I actually started looking around all over my home. And there it hit me….

For past sometime, I was feeling the need to have some showcase in our home where we could display the cute little knick knacks. I did not want to add a showcase on the floor space just for eye candy purpose. So, the place that I found was the purrrrrfect space…

Remember the photo from our first home….

Here are the two spaces that came to my mind :

The upper arrow indicates the space for showcase. And the kitchen entrance marks the space for medicine cabinet. Here is the AFTER picture for both these spaces:

Both these are made up of the leftover wood planks. I had enough mica left from the store to cover up for the showcase. But for medicine cabinet there was no mica left. I did not want to spend Rs. 500 on 8x8 mica sheet just to use 1x1 of it. So instead, I got creative. I had many greeting cards from my college days that were just collecting dust. I took a bright yellow chart paper, and pasted the cute flowers from those greeting cards and covered up the wood planks. For the edges, I bought a few fake sea shells from local market at throwaway prices and covered them. In the end, it looked so lively and beautiful and moreover it served the purpose well. There was no central space in our 2 BHK apartment for medicine storage. This place had a great function. This makeover is 7 years old. Had I been exposed to blog world that time, I would have put the bottles in a box and would have covered it with cute liners like I have done in this new home.

    

Nice memories I have of that home. All thanks to Laksh for making me nostalgic and inspiring this post.

What is your leftover wood planks story??

ILU’s 1st Birthday Party!!

 

Hey Everyone!!

  There is a Whatsapp message going around these days ---

“Most Important question facing the country these days --------

 

Tere bachon ka holidays homework ho gaya kya?’

(Translation: Is your kids holidays homework complete?)

And to which my answer is still no! The school opens in another two days now and we still are not done! This June month has been super busy in our household. Every weekend either we were out or we were busy planning for the little one’s b’day. I had mentioned about this bday party in my last post. And as promised, I am back with an update on that.

We planned for ILU’s party on 21st June, although her bday was on 11th. The party was planned in a restaurant where we had already attended another 1st bday party and we had liked the space and the food there. So, once we finalized the place, we started planning for different events for the party. First and foremost, I wanted to do a movie featuring our daughter – meaning, I wanted to make a video clip of her pictures aligned with appropriate songs. Song selection was one tedious task, but finally I selected three songs. Once those were identified, editing the songs to keep the required portions of the songs, aligning the pictures according to the song, and then joining all these together took most of the time. All of this took too much of my time, but I completely enjoyed the process. Actually I loved the process. Watching all the pictures starting from her birth took me down the memory lane and most days I was awake late in the night just going through all the pics.

This video clip was to be the star of the party. After this was planned and worked upon, came the bday party décor. We wanted a flex banner to be put up on the stage displaying few adorable pics of our daughter. The balloon colors were White, pink, purple and a few golden ones. Ain’t these the obvious colors for a girl’s birthday party????

Has it been too much of talking (I mean writing) without pictures????

Here are some of the pics from the party.

 

And the star of the party – The Video -

There has been some error in uploading the video on this blog.

Here is the link to the youtube where I have uploaded this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBsDi6sE04A

I had planned for two games in the party. One game for the kids, and one for the couples.

Kids game was simple – I made a face on a chalkboard , and the kids were supposed to put a ‘Bindi’ mark with chalk with eyes blindfolded. It was fun to watch the kids trying to adopt different means to manipulate the ‘Bindi’ place.

Couples game was interesting- One person picks up a slip which has the name of an object written on it. He/she has to explain the object in terms of shape without revealing its function. The other person draws the explained object on a chalkboard and guesses/identifies the object. This game was very well received by the couples and actually two of the couples took it on their ego –‘ Arre guess kaise nahin kar paaye???’. (Why couldn’t you/I identify the object??’).

Do you see the drawing there.. That is supposed to be a ‘Gas Stove’… Ha….

Overall, Everyone enjoyed in the party, and the games and the video were a good hit. After making the video I feel like I am an expert in songs editing, joining and video making. If any one of you wants to know about it, I would be more than ready to help.

After the 21st of June, I felt like I had no work left to do. I felt so free and EMPTY!!! But the sense of accomplishment filled me. (ha ha).

Overall the party was a success and everyone enjoyed a lot…

How did you spend your month of June?? The vacation time??? Was it as busy as mine???

Busy Bee!!!

Hey everyone!!!

 In case you are wondering why I am not posting these days, well,  I have been super crazy busy this month. Actually I am that busy that I could not even write the post about being busy.(wink wink)

Every weekend is super hectic and weekdays are even more work. This Saturday we are celebrating our daughter's first birthday and this whole week I have been so much busy planning all the operations and what not. I will be back next week, hopefully to give a detailed description about the whole event.



Take care !!!!

(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!!!!