Recently, I upgraded some little things around the house to increase effectiveness and efficiency. I pride myself on being a professional homemaker so I constantly think of ways to improve the way we organise things in the house.
2 and a half years ago, I had already bought a dish rack that will keep my dishes neat and out of the way. (Click here for a post about it.) And we got the Ikea toy shelf which is still a wonderful way to keep all the kids' toys, though we've had since added an Ikea book shelf for the expanding library of children's books and readers.
This year, we'd shifted the toy shelf to the living room so that I could create a classroom setting in one section of the kid's room free of distractions for homeschooling and mounted a white board for teaching purposes. I also noticed that quite a lot of the cooking utensils I had hanging at my stove area were rarely used and were mostly collecting dust so I cleaned them and kept them in the drawers instead. Now, my cooking area is much less cluttered.
Previously, the towels in our bathroom were hung up using giant hangers placed on suction cup hooks. However, having to keep taking the hanger up and down whenever we want to use the towels was a constant hassle. We do not want to drill holes into our tiles so I finally found suction cup towel bars.
This is just so much easier...
The kids' plastic crockery and cutlery have always been kept in a small Ikea box and placed on the dining table so that they can set the table themselves and be trusted to put them back in the box after washing. However, with 3 kids now and the addition of soup bowls and spoons, the box has become too crowded to properly dry them. When Jayna finally complained to me that her cup stinks because it was not well-aired, I knew it was time to upgrade it.
The kids have their very own dish rack.
With an increase in the number of family members, it has become rather tedious to keep boiling water throughout the day. We eventually thought it a good investment to get a water filter. No more being irritated when someone forgets to boil water after emptying the water jug and having to wait for the boiled water to cool or mixing in cold water/ice to bring it to a drinkable temperature.
I simply love the chrome version!
The filing system that I used to have on my chest of drawers had become rather cluttered. Most of the paper work there were a legacy from my single days! We realised that we needed a new system for our documents and thus we threw away rusty ring files and dusty document trays, burned the old confidential materials and bought box files for the papers.
The space is cleared for other things
We've recently also said goodbye to an old laser printer which had been with Joshua since before we dated. We're left with the color printer which is enough for all our scanning and printing purposes. It was pretty inconvenient with one printer stacked on top of the other. I guess the old one had sentimental value to my husband and he finally could bear to part with it after much persuasion. :P
I remember that when I was a kid, I used to think that my future husband would be the handyman in the house, just like my Dad was. But thinking back on the past 5 years of marriage, I was the one who fixed the lights, installed appliances, changed the faucets, toilet seats, water sprays etc, re-applied the kitchen and bathroom sealant, spray-painted the walls to make them look as good as new, assembled the furniture and upgraded various things around the house. And the amazing thing is: I enjoy doing all these stuff!
My husband always feels very embarrassed that I have to be the one to do all the handyman work but I keep telling him that not every wife has a husband who is the 24 hour IT help-desk that he is. All that computer stuff e.g. wifi, surveillance cameras and software troubleshooting are way out of my league. I'm just happy that we are doing what we excel in and ends up fully complementing each other.
After all, as a professional homemaker, fixing things in the home is simply part of my job. :)
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