Quick Project 2 - In my clothes cupboard

I have bought some new dresses recently  and I have old ones which needs to be thrown off. And my cupboard inevitably became very unorganised. Also, as I rarely give my duppattas for ironing, I was ending up searching the entire cupboard for matching duppattas. So as my second project I pulled down my entire salwar-kurta collections. I  segregated them into 4 stacks - One stack of dress that I wont be wearing anymore, second for clothes that I will keep wearing till this year end then they will go out of my cupboard( these are ones I like but have gone bad.. still doesnt feel like throwing them away), a third stack for dresses that i will start using from the new year and 4th stack for dress which lack a pair( because I found sets where the kurta has gone bad but the salwar is good. So a new kurta can make a new set of dress.)

Now set one went into a plastic cover, set 2 and 3 were neatly folded will kurta, salwar and duppatta all together and set 4 was kept seperately as they need to go out shopping looking for a matching pair. I also had a few set of dress materials that need to be stitched. So I decided to keep them out of the cupboard so that they are constant reminder to be taken for stitching.

Another half an hour well spent that it will save me 5 minutes in the morning that I was otherwise loosing searching for matching sets of dress :-)

Quick Project 1 - In Kitchen

So as I have decided to get my house clean this month, I have decided to run these quick projects everyday. The idea of a quick project is that it should not take more than 30 minutes a day. I will be happy if I can get it done in 15 minutes. 

As my quick project 1, I took a look around my kitchen. When I said around, I looked up also. I found bags of plastic softdrink bottles that I had stored "just in case ....". So keeping a couple of half little ones and 2 litre ones( again " just in case I need it ..."), I kept them to be sent with the garbage next day. Now looking down at the little cramped collection of china cups, I found I have two sets of half dozen each that I have rarely used in the last 6 years... Off they also go for next days garbage. 

Throwing off the china cups freed up some space in my kitchen cupboard and it helped me do two things. My baking things and oven racks are hidden behind my plate rack for lack of space. Every time I have to get the oven rack or get some baking powder, I have to move my plate rack. Every time I try to do that, I have plates falling down and making a lot of sound. (I use a lot of steel plates). So I moved my baking stuff and oven racks to the space freed up by gone tea cups.

Before moving these things to the space, I made use of that little space to move other things in the same shelf temporarily and give a wipe down to that shelf.

With 30 min in kitchen, I have got rid of some unnecessary things and cleaned up a cupboard and moved few things from difficult to access areas to easily accessible areas.

Prologue

I try doing little organising here and there, now and then. And I understand its a continuous process - organising and maintaining.. But I feel there is some places which I have to take real long time to clean up. There are some extra storage spaces that I need to create. I am a person who very strictly follows the principle of not keeping any unnecessary things around. I believe in giving it out.

When I start looking on the internet  for organising and cleaning ideas, I find most of them are from outside. That is why I thought of sharing my organising an cleaning tips here for an average Indian household.

To start with I live in a 1500 squarefeet apartment. As I live in a rented apartment, I cannot make any structural changes in the apartment though there are lot that I would love to do. And the cooking is Kerala style and so the kitchen has lots of vessels that I cannot banish from there. And I have a 5 year old son, which means lots of toys and books to manage.

Dress cupboards are regularly cleaned out and unused dresses regularly donated. So there is nothing much to out there except the fact that I can make of an extra cupboard to organise then properly. But for the time being, I am fine with leaving with whatever space available.

My house badly needs a coat of paint. Need to work with the landlord to see if it is possible to get a coat done as it was not done when we moved in.

So the three major areas that I am planning to focus on cleaning are
-Kitchen
-Books
-Toys..

Kitchen is pretty much cramped and since the utility area adjacent to it is open, that area doesnt help much.
So the only way out is get some extra storage in the dining hall to move somethings out from the kitchen to the dining area. And the shelves need some washing and cleaning too..

As a family, we all love reading and so have a pretty good collection of books.  But we dont have the luxury of a room with wall covered with book shelves. So with two small bookshelves overflowing, we currently have books in all possible places - in a box under the bed, the side tables and even the corner shelves of our cupboard. So decision is to invest in a larger book shelf.

All broken toys get thrown into the gargage from time to time. Still every time I look at the toys my son has, I still find something more to be thrown off. And the there are toys in good condition that I dont want to throw off but my son has outgrown them. So that needs some cleaning and I need to figure out how to donate them effectively.

With my full time job, I am not able to manage all my cleaning. So this year, I have decided to take off a week at end of Christmas to clean up before New Year. But then if I keep all my cleaning and organising to that one week, it will be overwhelming. So I have decided to run little cleaning up projects everyday till for the whole of December so that my family can wake up to a clean house on for the new year 2012.