Need help to declutter, reorganise this Diwali? YouTubers got your back | Mumbai news - Hindustan Times
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Need help to declutter, reorganise this Diwali? YouTubers got your back

Hindustan Times | ByRiddhi Doshi
Oct 13, 2017 08:37 PM IST

Young bloggers have got tips and advice to manage your wardrobe, kitchen, dressing area and shelves.

Planning a spot of house cleaning for Diwali? Chances are you’ll do the usual wipe down of surfaces, discard a few items you no longer need, and be done – just to have the clutter return with a vengeance a few weeks later.

Keep a compartment for spare aux cables, pen drives and hard drives. No mess, no tangles, no confusion.(ImagesBazaar)
Keep a compartment for spare aux cables, pen drives and hard drives. No mess, no tangles, no confusion.(ImagesBazaar)

This year, why not let a battalion of YouTube gurus and bloggers help. These are young men and women with tips and advice to manage your wardrobe, kitchen, dressing area or shelves. This isn’t about looking at a pair of socks and asking “Does It Spark Joy” the way devotees of Japanese decluttering expert Marie Kondo have been doing.

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It’s about finding practical, lasting ways to fight the material pileup a busy life inevitably brings.

“Organising means having a place for everything and keeping everything in its place,” says Sonia Johri, a whose eponymous YouTube channel focuses on home décor and organisation.

Home décor and organising vlogger Ashu Khatter of Simplify Your Space suggests that you clean and organise one thing at a time. “It’s less time consuming and tiring,” says Khatter.

Decluttering and organising can be therapeutic, says organising vlogger Sonali Shekhar of Bowerspace. You’ll feel its effects for months, particularly in an emergency, when you’re looking for little things like batteries, stickers, screws, or needles. “Not finding these on time could mar the smooth running of the household.”

Dusters at the ready? Let’s get started.

1.Factor in your gizmos. Most homes have dedicated linen closets and even a redundant sewing box. What they haven’t yet done is create space for the many gadgets that are now part of the home. Dedicate a drawer for your laptop, iPad, Kindle, camera, and spare phones. Store the items you use often in the front, and relegate the others to the back. This is also a good place to keep the warranty cards and box you keep looking for when it’s time for repair or trade in.

2.Get wired: For digital junkies, is more annoying than not finding the right charger or the right cable for your device. The solution, a deep, compartmentalised box, in which you place each charger separately. Label them all. And keep a compartment for spare aux cables, pen drives and hard drives. No mess, no tangles, no confusion.

3.Sartorial sorting: If you take too long to pick what to wear to work every day, maybe it’s not you, it’s just the way your closet is organised. Use hangers with three divisions and hang one trouser and two matching tops in each of them. Pre-matching will save you time, and you can always re-match every few months.

Dedicate your wardrobe to only the clothes you use right now. (Getty Images/Vetta)
Dedicate your wardrobe to only the clothes you use right now. (Getty Images/Vetta)

4.Kill the fantasy: One of the key drives of hoarding is what we hold on to objects we are reserving for a dream future. Old clothes in a size we hope to one day fit back into, hobby projects we dream of one day completing, gym equipment we will one day have time for, even books we hope to read again. Don’t let tomorrow intrude on today. Dedicate the space in your home to what you can use right now.

5.Fix the fridge: A well-organised refrigerator will save time and electricity – you won’t keep the door open as long, to look for things. Perishables and leftovers are best stored in front, at eye level. Items that may drop go at the bottom, where they’ll cause less mess. And transparent bowls and lids will help you locate food easily. Few families use baskets in the freezer, but there are good way to separate items, especially when frost buildup makes all packets look the same.

Keep makeup brushes in a covered container so they stay dust free (minimising breakouts). Don’t fall for internet photos that depict dressers with brushes kept in the open. It is not hygienic.

6.Counter culture: Group similar items, like spoons, spatulas and pans in storage baskets and label them. Use see-through containers so that you don’t have to open each one to find out what’s in there. Grouping food items by use is also a good idea. Your pasta and pizza ingredients could go in one compartment and the masalas for Indian dishes could go in another.

7.Beauty bay: The boom in India’s cosmetics and skincare industry is probably making its presence felt in your home now. Maximise space in your dressing table drawers by using drawer separators for small items like nail polish and lipstick. Keep makeup brushes in a covered container so they stay dust free (minimizing breakouts). Don’t fall for internet photos that depict dressers with brushes kept in the open. It is not hygienic.

8.Odds and ends: A planned house is one where you can find a small item quickly. Store small things such as buttons, needle and thread, screws and batteries in transparent plastic boxes with many compartments. Keep button cells in one compartment pencil cells in another and so on. Organise a basic tool box and keep it handy.

9.Cheat sheets: Making your bed every day is annoying. A shortcut - knot each corner of your bedsheet before tucking it under the mattress. This will ensure that the sheet doesn’t come out easily and you don’t have to spend time in making your bed every day.

10.A place for presents: Those earrings you’re keeping aside for a cousin, the gift you’re hoping to recycle, the silk pouch you saved to put a present in, the scarf that makes an emergency gift, greeting cards, wedding envelopes, extra ribbon, glitter pens. Each is usually used in conjunction with another. Store them all in one place.

Inputs also from Ayushi Anand of 365daysofbliss.com and Ritu Rajput of The Indian Beauty Blog

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