Ring Ring……
(Door Bell ringing)
Click
(Door opens)
Lady: Put these vegetables in their place.
Smart Home: Done Ma’am
Sounds like a conversation between a landlady and her smart home which works on artificial intelligence and cleans itself. How lovely would it be to own a house like this. But, unfortunately although we own smartly equipped homes, we have to manually clean them on a regular basis. Till the dream of AI run houses becomes a reality, the task of cleaning and de-cluttering it lies on our shoulders and like it or not, we do need some easy ways of doing so. Every smart home has one of such storage places as a wardrobe, kitchen groceries store, playrooms or studies which require regular cleaning. In this article, I will share five smart homes cleanliness tips.
1. Wardrobes: With most of our life being spent at different places in addition to our smart homes, it becomes essential to own huge wardrobes and /or clothes storage areas. Many people make exclusive wardrobes or clothes changing areas while some others prefer to utilise the walls in each room for making cupboards to store clothes inside them. In both the cases, it is essential to keep these cupboards or wardrobes dry, systematically arranged and clean at all times. The threats that can turn our life into a nightmare if we do not keep these wardrobes clean are termite attacks, fungus infection and or cobwebs which can spoil our precious Cashmere kurtis or Pashmina shawls and convert our woolens or Chanderi Sarees/Achkans into powdered rags.
Cleanliness Tip: Use Naphthelene Balls regularly before stacking the clothes in the cupboards. In case of wooden racks it is essential to keep them moisture free and wipe them with a dry cloth. Clothes can be stored based on the fabrics, for example: all woolens can go together while summer clothes can be kept separately. . Those clothes which are used on a daily basis such as night wear or office or sports wear can be kept in open airy racks so that at no cost they spread the moisture further.
2. Book/CD/Stationery Shelves. All of us with school-going children or Work from Home Adults have a work desk or a study at home. Gradually this table becomes the most cluttered and dusty place in the house. Very rarely, do we take out time to take out unused pens, pencils, crayons and so on. Also, many of us, Movie-lovers have huge collections of Bestsellers, CDs, cassettes or Video Tapes before we switched to Kindles or Netflix. We do not want to part with them at the same time, we rarely use them anymore. But we keep storing them for our lifetime.
Cleanliness Tip: The CDs, cassettes and or video tapes need to be segregated and given to Digital Junk Parks, if any available in your city. If not, explore the options of donating them to some central Libraries or School/Colleges of needy institutions. If not, think of redecorating them and using them for pasting your family pictures or sticky reminder notes or mere show-pieces. Keep all the smaller stationery in baskets or open trays so that it is visible to you and can be thrown whenever not in use.go
3.
Kitchen Storage Racks: For all of us who don’t feel Gluttony to be a sin, Kitchens are the most important and most relaxing spaces in a smart home. Smart homes have smarter kitchens with highly specialized cooking equipments such as the microwave ovens, grills, fryers, dishwashers and other such equipments. In addition to them there are fresh and dry groceries which are also kept inside the kitchen. Many times the kitchen cupboards become house of ants,bugs and cockroaches. And many of the veggies and eatables too go bad due to our negligence or over indulgence.
Cleanliness Tip: It is important to stop hoarding more than what we need for a week’s time period. One can always go and buy whatever we require and whenever we require. In order to stop over-hoarding,it is essential to make a weekly menu of meals that we are going to make in the week for the family members. This will give us an idea of the ingredients that we require for the meals. This will curb your practice of over storage. Similarly, the electrical or electronic items that are used in the kitchen need to be kept dry after every usage. Empty your drawers and modular racks every once in a while to keep the cockroaches out of the kitchen.
4. Play Rooms : Most of the modern families are nuclear families with single child and both parents working day and night. In such cases the young ones are pampered by the close relatives and/or the grandparents. As a result, the houses are full of replicas of their favourite comic characters, soft toys, board games and many other toys. With time and usage,these toys become dusty,dirty and unhygienic for the children. But due to some or the other reason, we tend to keep them still in the house. If we want to keep all the toys at home, we need to keep them clean and dust free for usage of kids.
Cleanliness Tip: The easiest thing to keep the play rooms clean and tidy is to keep emptying it frequently. Take this as an opportunity to teach the children the joy of sharing and detachment.Take them to the Schools of Needy Children or Orphanages and let them donate their toys which they don’t play with anymore or have outgrown them to those needy children. The other toys can be stacked as per their categories such as board games and puzzles one over the other; comic characters in baskets and soft toys in a cupboard or a wooden open rack.
5. Fitness Equipment : Many of us have converted our houses into spaces which are used for multi-purpose activities such as the garage space converted into a fitness studio and parking space for cars and old luggage boxes. In such cases, we tend to just place things on top of each other without thinking much. As a result,the items just lie around without being used/moved much. This again turns the garage into a junkyard than an active breathable space.
Cleanliness Tip : One needs to make use of the walls in the garage too for storing and keeping the gym equipment clean. Keep the weights balls and dub balls covered so that they do not catch dust. Air the mats and if possible cover them in cotton sheets instead of poly/plastic sheets. This way the sweaty portions will not become infectious till your next use. Try to spray some disinfectants such as Dettol/Collin on the weights before and after you use them.
Although smart houses connect each and every item or appliances of your house; it is finally you: the master of the house who have to decide how smartly and when you will clean the house. It will not be long till people invent smart vacuum cleaners which may reduce all your pain and make cleaning too a completely smart affair.
