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Raise your hand if you do not dread that dark area under the kitchen sink, and you have my admiration. When I had just begun to work years ago, I once rented a 25-year old home. What was I thinking? Affordable rent. Every night was a nightmare. The minute I would switch on the light, all I could see on the floor were generations of roaches that came from under the sink. Maybe because: 1) the kitchen was dark 2) the pipes leading to the gutter underneath were ill-fitted 3) it was hard to access for cleaning, and 4) the trash can was kept there.   No matter how clean the area was, it did not deter the roaches. Sound familiar? I am sure many of you who have rented homes, or otherwise, would agree with me. Personally, I’m so glad those days are past me when colonies of cockroaches…

You know what the hardest part of gardening is? Atleast, it is for me. Getting the seeds to germinate, and of course, dealing with pests the organic way.   Germinating seeds might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s a game of patience. One that I never seem to crack for seeds like peppers/capsicum. Have you ever wandered into a nursery and looked with awe at those neatly lined seedlings in a tray? I would wonder either they have magic fingers, or there is a trick behind this 100% germination rate.   I haven’t cracked the code yet, but I guess it’s the perfect greenhouse environment + fertilizer for that kinda success rate.   My success with germinating seeds these past two months have been appalling. Tomato, egg plant, capsicum, cucumber, chilli, bitter gourd ~ nada. When they did germinate, I made the mistake of keeping the seedling tray outside. If I…

The DIY bug has bit me. The itch to do something around the house lies dormant in action with ideas just swarming in the head all the time. But, when it gets active, there’s no stopping. I like it this way because projects that should have got done months ago are all done in a week’s time. Presenting to you today, a fancy makeover to a humble plastic planter that had clearly seen better days. My mom gave me this planter; exposed to the outdoors I started noticing some cracks along the edges. I didn’t want to give it away which is usually my first instinct. I tried to revive it with a few things found around the house and bought it indoors as a holder for the pothos/money plant. It’s a simple DIY that you can get it done in less than 30 mins under a budget of Rs.150.…

If you had INR 95,000 to set up a guest room, what would you add to your cart to make the room functional and aesthetic? Check out my list. We live in an era where we understand and appreciate the merits of shopping online – be it for our personal wardrobe or taking it as far as setting up a whole home. The convenience of comparing prices, designs, returns if it doesn’t match our preferences or dimensions are unparalleled. I wanted to illustrate how to set up a guest bed room in less than INR 95,000. This is more along the lines of “Shop the look” you may find on many sites, but this is more comprehensive in that products are curated from multiple sites and chosen to fit a budget and a minimalist theme without going over the top. These are bare essentials for a room. Having said that,…

Designing the wall along and below a staircase is one of the most challenging parts of designing a house, in my opinion. In this post, we look at a simple idea you can put together with materials every home as for that personal effect. Yes, I’m talking about a gallery wall along a staircase.  The angled, small space makes it tricky, and there’s a risk of things go badly wrong at the slightest mishap. Daunted by these thoughts, many people choose to shy away from this task. You may not believe it, but creating a stairway gallery wall is actually pretty easy once you know the tricks. So here are our top tips for creating a stairway gallery wall. 1. Keep it personal This seems like an obvious thing to do, but people often compromise personal pieces for things that solely serve as decorative pieces. Put things that mean something…

Yesterday, in the first part of this series to make your home spotless just in time for Diwali, we looked at getting a sparkling living room and bedroom. Today, we move into one of the high traffic areas after the kitchen and which just gets messy no water what, if not tended to. What’s the one thing you love about any good hotel? Especially when someone else does the job for you to keep it dry. Yes, you guessed it right – bathrooms! And no matter how clean the rest of the home is, it’s the bathrooms that will make or break it. Most Indian bathrooms do not have clear segregation of shower area (wet vs dry area) which makes it  tough to keep it dry all through the day. Wetness = magnet for dirt = floor stains in the long run. The trick for minimal maintenance in bathrooms is to…

How I turned a Maggi bottle into an oil dispenserThis is a thrift post to show how to reuse ketchup and sauce bottles into oil dispensers. Not only are they healthy relative to plastic, they cost almost nothing and look amazing. I have been using these for over six years now. See what you need to make one at home.

I’m in love with glass lately – all shapes, sizes and colors. Thanks to MasterChef, I fell in love with glass oil dispensers that took me on a dispenser-hunting mission to Jamals, Home Stop, @ home, Home Town, a zillion other fancy crockery shops in the neighborhood and wherever we went. So,  I was looking for simple glass oil dispensers but didn’t find anything locally that was budget-friendly.

Then, when the Maggi ketchup bottle got over this time, I had cleaned it up (tip: use hot water and liquid soap to remove labels easily) to paint on it. But, it stayed on the counter for a week when I realized it could be turned into a oil dispenser with a pourer/spout. And, this is what we have.  A standard size spout fixes well on most bottles.

How I turned a Maggi bottle into an oil dispenser