Decluttering the Clutter!

Boxes big and small, Covers and bags of so many brands, books and papers , forgotten bottles of jam and food...clearing the mess at home is quite an achievement by itself. Everytime I 'Clean the Clutter' or must I rather say 'get rid of the clutter', because once you clean, hopefully there is no remains of clutter. So every time I get rid of the clutter, I swear to myself that this is not going to happen again. But the key to a clutterless home is constant organization. Woah! sounds like a big task. It is and once you let it grow, its like a devil that's out to get you some day! So tame it and get over with it when its small.

There was nothing too much to clean this weekend. But , we are always buying something; loads of shopping , groceries , bags , bills ..things just add up. The best way to declutter you clutter.

1. Just start cleaning! The first and foremost step is to start. If you put it away for another day , remember its going to grow big and more worse. You have to do it anyway. So get started.
2. Keep a couple of garbage bags with you. Just think..Have you used this or would you require it..If any part of your brain says No.Just throw the damn stuff away. I somehow cant get myself to throw things. But Old boxes, bills and shopping bags, I did throw them away. 
3. I love to segregate stuff. It makes the whole place look so tidier, even if you end up keeping so many things. So I always invest in good and cheap boxes with and without lids! 
4. Take a walk to the nearest DollarStore and just get a dozen of those plastic trays and boxes of various widths and heights.
5. Place them on the countertops of your kitchen/washroom/dressing table/just any place where you throw the mails/bills /keys. Segregate the stuff and keep the boxes. The place looks tidy! Its easier to sort them out later when you are free. Put all your lipsticks in a small tray.Your deoderant and sprays, shampoos and hair setting gels in one etc. Or you can place all your bottles in one or however you like it. The very aspect of placing them in one contained box makes the place look so clean and they wont move .So the counter tops will always look organized.
6. Fridge : 

• There are certain tips that I love to make the fridge look organized. You get plastic containers/baskets that have a handle specially made for the fridge.I place all my pickles and paste in those.So its neatly stacked in one basket. Whenever I use them for dinner, I just take the whole basket to the dining table. Use it and place the basket back. It declutters your fridge in an instant and you will not forget what you have! 
• I also recently bought 3 big baskets to fit in one shelf of the refrigerator to keep tomatoes , potatoes  etc. They always occupy so much place in the fridge and they are indispensable to a kitchen. So once I segregated them in baskets , it was so easy to just pick them, wash them or refill when its over. If the basket has holes (which I always prefer) you can just run water over the whole basket to wash it and dry them. 
• Keep the top row for diary products like milk and yogurt and eggs, so you always can check in a glance of what to buy on a daily or weekly basis. 
• The stored food and bread , I keep them in 2nd and 3rd rows.     

These are some tips  I generally use. Happy decluttering and I know , I may be doing the same in a few more weeks.Will post more ideas when I get to it again!

                                                

Biking

A new found hobby in biking!

Well, not exactly my new found hobby but something my husband wanted to do from a long time. After his hours long of analytical searching on what would be good and where, we settled on buying 2 bicycles from Sportscheck.We were't sure how we would like it , so we bought a little more than the basic models available. The deal was good and we ended up feeling happy and in proud possession of 2 new bikes.Now , we had to fine tune the bikes and get them in order.It was all taken care at the store. Safety first! So we decided on buying a pair of helmets. Colourful head gears with so many distictions unaware to the human eye. I just wanted a simple ladies.  Helmet I remember saying to myself. It off course is the age of the consumer! What next, safety of us was taken care and what about our two new prized possession.We had to save them from being stolen.Yes, we needed locks. Shiny metallic locks hung on an array of cycle accessories. Some were wound like a coil, some were like a U metal Loop. We settled on the U metal loop that looked promisingly stronger. Now , we were ready!

We were excited and traveled a long way across our home , to a lake. We were very excited that we had covered such a distance on our first ride. It was time to go back and as we did, we dawned upon the realization about the science of uphill and downhill drives. All the time we never noticed was that , we had ridden downhill. As we progressed , I started panting and heaving. Successfully I managed to reach home  alternating between pedaling and walking with our bikes. Who said biking was easy. It is good that , a hobby such as this could increase your body's endurance. But , cycling reminded us of our childhoods. As I held my handlebar and moved smoothly , soaring through the wind, flashes of my childhood and my small red bike flashed on my eyes. These inanimate objects are so full of life I thought to myself. Feeling happy, tired , exhausted and satisfied , we carried our bikes to our apartments and laid them to rest for the night! 

Anything that brings us joy is a thing to treasure is it not?!

Another Food Blog ??!!

Well, I know there are countless food blogs. I restrained myself from the idea of a food blog for almost a year. The very thought of hosting another food blog to an already existing list of blogs was holding me back. Then it struck to me, so what?! Cooking is a passion for many and good food can impress just anyone! To share the joy , is joy by itself. I already had 3 blogs to my blog roll on Blogspot, so thought of using WordPress for a change. This is the story of the birth of ‘Not just another food-blog’ but ‘eat-soul-full’ blog seasoned with recipes from places close to my heart , places I’ve traveled and from people near, far, known and unknown who share the joy of cooking!
I must add, Cook your way through a man’s heart , was why I started cooking and yes! Krish, is an ardent fan, connoisseur and critic (v.v.rarely:-))who keeps my cullinary skills challenged every day!This blog is dedicated just to you sweetheart. Its because of your patience, love for food and a heart to sacrifice your taste buds anytime , have I the heart to try anything and everything feeling so happy that no matter what , you are there to taste it and say ‘Its great!!’.

To see my foodblog Click on the following link. I just started and will load it with many of my recipes stacked in a recipe book , stained with sauces and vegetable colours!! Wait for more..try and eat a heart filled meal :-)

http://eatsoulfull.wordpress.com/

The Nocturnal Me

Its 1:30 am and I still havent got a glimse of sleep in me. I am wide awake as I sit and reflect so many things on the desktop of my cerebellum. I try to Ctrl+Alt+Del my thoughts and all thats being processed by my neurological processors. I fail miserably as I continue to write my thoughts onto the wordpad of the blogger. Well lets see whats flashing in my thoughts right now. How fast is the fleet of mind...Wait,as I write this line, I think of one of the poem's that I had studied..i think its Ozymandias..no it was about a king all alone in an island..Yes the Solitude of Alexander Selkirk..I remember the lines where  he says...How fast is the fleet of mind , much faster than the speed of light. How true is that! There is a mayhem of thoughts in my mind and its travelling like a kite unbound and free of strings, just flowing with the air. Now my thoughts move from the fleet of mind , then about the poem (where I slightly remember my Prose lecturer Mrs.Gordon, in late sixties, elegant with her string of pearls and a crisp cotton saree, her spectacles and the collection of poems in her hand) and then travel to how my mind is flying as a kite. Now , I just stretch my legs to comfortably place my limbs to assist my forelimbs in the task of multiple repetitive movement of my fingers. I google to find a nice scientific word to replace 'fingers' and I end up with the metacarpels and phalages. After which I settle down to just write fingers. My eyes glance the book Im reading about Africa. Flashes of African history appear in the projector screen of my inward sight. When I read every page of the book on African history, I have visualized and potrayed a civilization so rich in culture, prosperous with trade and yet doomed by centuries of tortures by countless invaders and religious upheavals. Im still reading and am yet to finish the book. My mind immediately maps war and suppression. I think about Afghanistan. I read an article today on the Golden Hour in Afghanistan. Golden Hour is that crucial one hour where a victim of any kind of physical injury is treated to save his life , limb or just help him have a less painful death. The author speaks to the American soldiers who serve day in and day night picking up body parts and wounded friends and enemies alike from sites of mishap that pose more danger for them to even stop the helicoptor and help the wounded. What an emotional roller coaster must it be for them every hour of the day or maybe minutes. My mind slowly travels to the movie 'Hurt Locker', the movie that won the Oscar this year.Now, that was a really wonderfully told tale of the virtual deaths the soldiers and bomb squad teams have every second of their jobs. When the movie bet Avatar to win the Oscar, I hadn't watched the movie yet and I was taken aback. But, when I saw the movie, the movie gave a realistic no frill peek into the lives of the soldiers struggling in Afghanistan. 

Now my mind travels to the trillion dollar worth reserves found in Afghanistan thats being hit in headlines in all newspapers. So yes, the gulf may actually rebound with a fresh pound of new resources. But , who will benefit from this whole thing. The people of Afghanistan and the natives who ever they may be , have lost so much and whatever is left , reminds them of a Dark Age that might take a long time for them to even rebound and lead a natural life. Well maybe , these news headlines are (God forbid) going to cause another rush for power and money and create yet another curse on the land.

I sigh and slowly look at the time in my computer, and it reminds me I have to force my bursts of insomnia and get back to sleep. Now I need to think about something nice to forget the anger that develops inside me when I read/write about the war strick zones. Well, I am yawning, now thats a lucky sign!

So off to bed and I hope that will end my noctornal shift. Good Night!

How much weather influences our life!

When it rains, it pours. As I get up each day, from the past week, I religiously glance at the weather for the day. Never had the weather have such an influence in my life before. Untill my previous 2 birthdays , I actually have never witnessed the beauty of these 4 seasons in my life. In southern India, there were hot Summer breaks and a mild hot humid Monsoon time of the year and then a not so warm months of November and December which was our winter! January till March were the prosperous months for harvest and 

Vancouver is one of the beautiful cities in the world to actually experiance the beauty of nature. Beautiful British Columbia, thats how the province is called , is filled with a bountiful blessing of nature. Where best to see the seasons change, better than the color of nature and clothing of women! I know it might be strange that I celebrate the weather so much. But, for almost 2.5 decades i haven't seen such colors in my life. Now, that does make an impact! 

How much weather can impact your life on a day to day basis,lets see..

1.  Your mornings..looking at the window, that influences my first feeling for the day!

2.  How you feel..Sunny and nice, rainy and sloppy or cold and sleepy :-)thats how I feel most of the time!

3. What you wear..now thats a major one. You have to be careful, dress in layers, need a think jacket or a light one?Oh my, thats so so confusing but its nice. 

4. More pairs of shoes!

5. What you do? Summer is time for hiking, biking, nature and more outdoors. Winter comes and we snuggle into our warm homes and bowling or other indoor activities. Spring and Autumn, just see the flowers bloom or fall from the window. Somehow , seasons give you more reasons to enjoy life

6. Memories. yes, how much the weather influences what you remember or how you mind map those special and not so special events in your mind. Somehow, Fall is the season i become philosophical, with the trees shedding their leaves. I feel rejuvenated at Spring and summer I feel young and alive. Somehow memories of anything that happens get linked with the season.

7. Colors - Thats one of my favourites about season. What you dress, what you see, how the nature looks..every color that you see reflects the season. 

No wonder this is a cycle in itself. The seasons, the colors and the joy of birth and the troughs in life , all goes hand in hand. Men may come and men may go, but life goes on forever!!

Ooops, i think i wrote the above sentence glancing at the rain outside.Now, thats how the weather influences what you blog!
As of now I eagerly wait for the warm sunny days to brighten up our lives!

How to be Google Free

Google has been on my thoughts for quite some time now.Some of my previous posts express my fear on our dependability on google and how much Google follows us. I read this article and it was exactly something I was thinking about.

http://zenhabits.net/google-free/

To become Google free is quite a challenge, especially now that we are almost using it for our every application. As I say this, I realize that all my blogs are on the Blogger too! No escaping the clutches of Google. A Google free life , not that tough to achieve, according to the author of the article. Slowly she has been migrating from Google to other options. The article also gives good suggestions for alternatives to the Google applications which are most commonly used.

The scroogle for example is a wonderful search engine tool that we could possibly use to bypass Google cookies. The Scroogle.org serves as a middle-man between the User and the Google search engine. The results are the same as Google but are exempt without the Google cookies. It will surely take time and effort to actually get out of the Google routine, but its worth the try. Better late than never!! 

Please, stop the oil.

Everyday as I follow the news on the Oil Spill, it breaks me down. I feel awful. It shudders me to think that , thousands of gallons of crude oil are gushing into the ocean every hour and a part of the earth is never going to be the same again. 

At first the estimate given was 42000 gallons of oil spitted out of the chasm every day. But 5 days later , after analysis it was declared to be 210,000 gallons a day.It has also been declared as a 'National Security Issue' by the Obama government. But, it has also appeared in many Press Reports that the damage and extent of irreversible damage to the Gulf of Mexico has not been released completely. In one of the releases it has also been said that if the gushing oil not be stopper in 90 days it would cause a significant irreversible damage to the ecosystem at the Gulf of Mexico.

Isn't a Risk Analysis done in the inception of these projects. How come such a grave risk of this extent be overlooked.There has been speculations from many sources and satellite imagery of the spill taken by NASA and National Geography that has been treated with great secrecy and has not been made public. Gosh, I cant imagine the extent of damage that is being caused. As the clock ticking on my desktop moves a second, there is so much oil gushing out. The matter is actually suffocating me , even as I imagine the life forms killed every second. 

This is the latest update by BP on the Oil Spill Click here

I just wish they get this thing done. The whole incident is thousands of miles away from me, but I cant stop thinking about the thousands and millions of life forms whose home is being devastated every second. I cant stop thinking that while I read about Jaguar , the fastest supercomputer on earth and its amazing feat achieved by man, I still am scared that the fiends leashed out in the form of technology,can wipe us out in seconds. 
He has not the tool to protect himself from the damage that he is causing. How scary that is for a thought?!

Left Brain Vs Right Brain

The human brain is divided into 2 hemispheres; the right and the left brain. The left brain is responsible of  characteristics that involve sequencing , order, love for mathematics and science etc.The right brain is responsible for creativity, being absent minded, love for literature and art etc.Somehow every individual tends to have an influence of one of the either part of the brain. If the left influences an individual more than the right, then he/she is called a left brained person and vice versa. It also does not imply that a left brain person is not creative or that the right brain person is not very logical. Its just that the characteristics of your most dominant part of the brain influences most of your actions, activities , preferences and professional choices. 

There are many quiz's on the internet that help you find whether you are a left or a right brain person.

I took a quiz and i got 16 and 16 for both. That means I am a mix of both and use both sides. 

The results and the link for the quiz is published below which you could post on your blog too.

Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz The higher of these two numbers below indicates which side of your brain has dominance in your life. Realising your right brain/left brain tendancy will help you interact with and to understand others. Left Brain Dominance: (16) Right Brain Dominance: (16) Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz

I was not very satisfied and went to try another quiz. This was good too but it declared me as a complete 'left brained person'.
So i arrived at a conclusion that my personality is more towards a left brain personality , and i juggle back between both  brains occasionally.
You could try this quiz here
http://www.web-us.com/brain/braindominance.htm

Left Brain Characteristics - Click here
Right Brain Characteristics - Click here

Good luck trying to find whether you are right or left!
Either ways we are what we are!!