Little things matter - Home sweet home

To be honest, I'm not good in taking care of little details. I slowly learn, and here are some little things lessons that I think make a huge difference in making my home better =)

1. put my shoes back in the shoe racks
It's really simple, but I find it difficult at times. However, with 5 girls living in the same house, and all of us have quite a significant number of shoes, putting shoes back in the shoe racks makes a huge difference in getting tidy vs. untidy atmosphere once I step into the house

2. never ever delay picking up dry laundry
I often delay picking up dry laundry and as a result, it hinders my housemates to have an easy time hanging their laundry.

3. picking up hairs from the bathroom
My mom used to scold me A LOT because I always forget to pick up hairs from my bathroom. Eventually I feel disgusted with the amount of hair in my bathroom, so now I try to pick up hairs from the bathroom every time I finish taking showers.

4. having a house gathering
Each of us has a busy schedule. Last Sunday, we decided to revive our Disney Night, so we watched Snow White and Frozen =P It helps to create family atmosphere in our house.

Just a little bit of background about my house. One of my housemates works as a restaurant manager, so we rarely see her on weekday nights and weekends. Another housemate is studying bakery and working part-time. My own roommate is a programmer and she has Japanese lesson on Saturdays. Another housemate is my colleague and recently she has been overseas quite regularly. Me? I am a normal research assistant who always ends work on time, but I always eat out in the evenings.

So, finding common time is a challenge, and a sacrifice. Yet, I think it's worth it to have our 'family gathering' regularly =)

5. having cleaning schedule
--> self explanatory =P

=)

House vs. Home vs. Hotel

I posted this picture looong time ago. It's the mess of my room in my hostel. Oh well, life has changed. I'm working now and after I moved out from my hostel, I stayed with a roommate who was allergic to dust!!! So yeah...there's a change of lifestyle. And since last November when I moved to another new house where I am staying now, I don't think I can live in that kind of mess anymore.

My room is sometimes (?) still messy, but after 4 years staying in a hostel and 4 months staying with 2 nice housemates whom I rarely meet, but always say "Hi" and "How's your day?", I can't accept "my-room-is-like-hotel" behaviour. I'm so thankful that Priya, my current roommate, used to stay in the same hostel too, so we had the open-door-policy. Hahaha. We hang out in living room, we chit chat in living room, we open the door of our room if we're not going to sleep yet, and we just have a quick chat about the day when any of us go home. After a while, I think each of us can also sense when another party needs her private space and so we'll stop talking quickly when that kind of moment comes.

It's a home, not just a house, or worse, a hotel.

I'm still very far from being a homemaker. When I was in Indonesia, I was the type of person who just studies-goes to English course-goes this activity and that activity-full stop. I didn't iron my own cloth, I just put my uniforms in the laundry bag. The only things I washed were dishes (with complaint sometimes (?) ), socks, and... undergarment. So I do not know lots of things!! Please laugh at me because I don't know some names of vegetables (when I order food, I just point here and there) and I didn't know how to clean bathroom properly until I worked for a few hours per day in a study centre to fund myself to go for the service project in Thailand. There I learned how to clean the mirror, the toilet bowl, the sink, etc. They also taught me how to remove stain from the table cloth and how to clean the toaster.

However, I never practiced those things until I moved to Serangoon with the two housemates. Wahhh, I am literally the dirtiest and the messiest among them. One housemate is a guy, but he LOVES to mop the floor, vacuum everything, etc. My roommate is allergic to dust right? So she wiped the table and mopped the floor almost every day. Since we didn't have any schedule, so I picked the areas that I'm familiar with: bathroom!! Hahahahaha. (also tried to mop the floor once a week). And our house in Serangoon was sooo huge so that cleaning was really a good exercise. HAHAHAHA.

Anyway, I really learned a lot from my two housemates. Four months was enough to make me cry the night after my roommate left to Indonesia. The following day I moved to this current house. Different dynamic. Hahaha. 6 girls!! (So our kitchen and bathroom are filled with hairs soooo easily). Most of us go home very late and some of us do not have the habit to greet each other once we see others' coming home. It's such a simple thing, but I was quite sad the first few weeks because of this. (And sometimes I'm tempted to follow this style too! --> like now --> duh!). However, I thank God that things start to be better now :):)

Time to practice what they told us in circle: Have I put effort to make my home bright and cheerful???
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.........................