When in lull, declutter
This is a short blog post about a long weekend.
If there’s anything we dread more than the sagging industry of weekdays, it has to be the blowing lull of a Saturday-Sunday combo. Friday evening warms you up with promises of endless delight to come. By Saturday noon, you can smell the bullshit in your perception about weekends. The mad part being this trick never gets old. For introverted fools like us, who don’t want to go to a medieval fort in Rajasthan or trek up a small hill in Uttarakhand or stay in a Purvanchali campsite or younamethefunthingstodoinNCR, the apartment becomes a makeshift prison. You can leave it anytime you like but at the same time, you’re wary of taking your chances. If you ask me why i don’t like “going out”, it’s because i haven’t grown mature enough to NOT miss the place i’ve visited. It takes me days to get over, be it McLeodganj or Udaipur or Saattaal. So, i wound up executing the rituals: watching illegally downloaded movies/series/docus, streaming comedy specials legally, spending morning and evening on the terrace spotting colourful birds in our backyard (it’s a mini-bird sanctuary out here all thanks to an empty plot that was accidentally left to nature; lush green and chirpy and a genuine reminder of how our environment can take care of itself as long as we promise to stay the fuck away), playing with Ranga, a bit of gardening, a bit more of reading, aimless walks and eating amazing trials prepared by missus.
However, this long weekend, we tried something else too.
Our apartment has been the way it was 2.5+ years ago, when we made it our home. Not a thing had been moved from its original place. Table had been where it was, the same being true for almost everything else. So, this time around, we decided on getting rid of stuff we don’t require and making room for spatial experimentation. One of the main reasons we don’t touch our furniture or the painting on the walls is because of our consumeristic curse of hoarding stuff. With shit—a very apt word for the love child of our greed — occupying maximum space, we get arrested in our little surroundings, leaving little to no scope for improvisation.
Like i said, we tried.
First of all, we discarded unused boxes, clothes, carriers, rackets, etc. and started pushing things around the hall. The experiment has to begin in the hall; that’s the golden rule. Who made this rule? I did, who else? The main table had been moved a bit away from the kitchen; it looks bigger now due to removal of crap-that-had-been-lying-on-it-for-ages. Similarly, we moved the sofa closer to the balcony. The shoe rack got next to the door; a decision worth taking in 2014–15 instead of waiting for Usain Bolt to retire. Some books were transported from our bed’s mantle to the windowsill. Laced with a jar containing dried chilies, the arrangement looks like a grab out of Pinterest. Not too far away a few wall art, previously dumped and forgotten in the cupboard, have showed up nicely adjacent to each other. The irony: they feature music bands we’ve neither heard nor intend to. Oh, a lovely lamp has made its presence felt in the corner after criminal negligence on our behalf. A similar fate befell the chhotu almirah in the opposite corner, whose hat is now a tiny jade plant. The rugs, like the rest of us Gurgaonvasis, are waiting for winter. All in all, the hall looks wider than it is.
It’s Sunday evening and there’s a Monday to go. Hopefully, this experimentation shall influence the elements in our kitchen, bathroom, balcony and bedroom as well—soon. Perhaps tomorrow. There’s absolutely nothing on terrace so it’s relatively safe from us.
On that mess-free note, happy weekend to y’all.
