Battle for space

Got upto reorganizing my place again. Seems possessions have a way of piling up and creeping up on one. Since I shifted to my new place about six months before (  I've forgotten already if it was feb or march!), I've been trying to live a minimalist lifestyle. Beginning from guarding against having too much furniture, onto being ever vigilant about not letting things get out of hand wherein new stuff coming into the house is concerned. However I seem to be losing the battle.


I think what turned out to be very difficult initially was the kitchen. My kitchen wasn't big enough, and cooking being a newfound hobby, kitchen utensils and equipment started fascinating me. I would get inadvertently drawn to kitchen section of Ikea - drooling over the clever organizing ideas, seeing the ultra curved ladle, and clever sieve that seemed just must have for my place. Buying plates, spoons, dinner sets by dozens it seemed. A set of 12 piece stainless steel utensils breathlessly picked up in a mad rush at Dragon mart because the supermarket was past closing time (never used except, after I realized, we can only boil stuff in stainless steel stuff, cooking in it is literally impossible as food sticks and burns on the surface). I literally went mad shopping. Of course that is not the best way to go about equipping a kitchen and even today, I live with a fridge that seems a bit too small, and washing machine that I've splurged on, but that eats my clothes, chews them over in its maw like there is no tomorrow, and almost refuses to be done with them. Lots of utensils that I'd over indulged in have been thankfully passed over to hapless family, and others I tend to furtively overlook as they seem balefully to stare at me, due to my lack of use. I have idli maker, appam chetti, pizza tray, cake creamer, juicers, mixers in multiples.. list goes on and on. I also don't have some basic stuff which I would tend to find at my mom's kitchen, and those things I miss the most (khandni dasta, rotti patla etc). However situation has gotten so bad, that I was left with no place for anything new in kitchen and have to stop buying.

Well, I'm sure, all of you agree, that kitchen is a bitch to organize. But although it seems bad enough, its not what caught me by the blind side. I've got Naqiyah's stuff after all. Toys, books, clothes, cycles, floats even a boat! And every venture out to a Mall, every trip out of town, every outing to a new places or to old one at new time, is opportunity to buy more stuff. Yeah seems bad.. still not the worst. My sweet child, is the most considerate one on earth. On countless of occasion, we've walked into a toy store, or a supermarket, or a mall and walked out with nary a thing bought and she never complains. If ever there is something bought for her, its at my insistence. Mostly its she who's telling me, forget it papa, this is not so important. Specially if she elicted mild interest in something, and I started trying to buy it, whereas she was just checking it out. So yes, toys do take up some space, but they don't creep up on me, and getting rid of excess toys by giving them off to some other child in family is in fact is a rewarding experiance. Besides a lot of her toys tend to disappear as she keeps taking them from my place to Umaima's and boy am I happy about that! I guiltily encourage the toy migration sort of :)... So getting rid of toys doesn't pinch my concience too much ( specially giving away part) and toys don't create a problem wherein clutter is concerned. I mean they do contribute to it, but in a managable way.

Then there is clothes. Naqiyah's clothes which are every increasing in volume. Thankfully again, many of them I try to push off to Umaima's place and rest get old and can get happily discarded. So although infact she has more outfits then she can possibly do justice to, it is not a key problem. I personally don't seem to have bought clothes for myself in what seems like ages. Although my old clothes from Umaima's house are still landing up like a tide relentlessly washing-up debris onto the shore, to my house and I'm wondering why I have a polar weather collection of Jackets and winter stuff, I am happy enough ridding myself of any and all old outfits which I don't wear. Clothes are difficult but not impossible to control.

I have more major lurking problem. Something that’s piling on me by the days. Its the paperwork. Everything generates paperwork in this world it seems. Banks just love to inundate me with messages, letters, statements, offers and their favorite ~ Bills!... Then I seem to have phone bills which Etisalat seems to keep sending , and I don't understand how can I have more bills then the number of months that I've got the phone! Electricity bills, business related documents, company documents, contracts and legal stuff, old documents which Umaima's sending over from old house, the list is endless. Then I have invoices of daily spending, shopping bills, laundry bills, bills for every purchase made every day, warranty documents and credit card receipts and what not. Its endless. Also getting rid of each bit of paper of course requires careful scrutiny to ensure its not something important which I'll regret doing away with at the later date. Paperwork is currently my most pressing problem. I simply can't organize it right, and its every increasing quantity is bogging me down.

Second problem that is quite unmanageable is test samples. I inevitably get at least 4-5 couriers from China a month with settopboxes and other items. Sometimes in multiples per courier. Sometimes whole cartons full of stuff. Keeping this stuff (mostly its valuable, and generally even sending them across to me costs the factory atleast 150 ~ 200 USD which at times I  pay for) after its checked is a pain. Most of them are checked but not done with. Others are samples of my productions which I'm doing for some customer or another and I would like to have a test box myself. I even have Naqisat boxes named after my daughter, which I'd had no samples for, and actually bought the sample from the market!. So receivers are work in process, some are work finished, but like a baby, full of memories, most of them have cash value which is not possible to recoup. Throwing them away seems like a criminal waste. Keeping them is impossible!

Lastly ofcourse a problem that will eventually be much worse then above two and which historically has got me every time. Its Books. In India I used to be able to buy second hand books cheap, while I was growing up. So I had ever increasing piles of books, which I horded like treasure. From mags, to comics, to paperbacks both fiction and nonfiction stuff and some hardcover as well. I think it was always a challenge for my parents to find space for my ever increasing volumes, although I don't remember them complaining too much. Considering that upto 18 years of my life, I've stayed 5 of us (my parents, my 2 younger bros, and myself) in 150 square feet single room studio - which upgraded to 100 feet single room studio for another 5-7 years after our old place fell down and we shifted to a smaller rented place, crunch for space has been single factor why I still don't have all those tomes. But giving up books used to be most difficult thing for me to do. Painful even. However on shifting to Dubai, need to fend for bare necessities of life. And the cost of books ( second hand were unavailable), meant that economically it was impossible for me to buy books. However since I've shifted to my new place, I’ve got sort of independence to indulge. And indulging I am!.. Hell I have started picking up hardcover copies of books which I've already read (Dune for instance). I'm much more discerning about which books I do read. This is simple result of having wide choice of books available to buy since I'm buying new ones ( for second hand books, the choice is limited to what is available after all). Now add all the books that I keep picking up (simply must have, have to etc) for Naqiyah ( just the other day I was all excited to show her latest stuff I bought for her, and she innocently asked me - whats so important about books?), and I know that books are going to be one serious problem for me in future.

So here I find myself back in Ikea. Shopping for furniture. After having promised myself to keep the walls bare, and floor empty. Living space that one could breath in. Having lived in confined space for a big part of my life, open empty space seems like a luxury that I love to indulge in. Problem is not even existing stuff which I have horded, rather the problem is that uncoincously it seems I've decided to allocate 2 of existing Cabinets in my house to books, current and future. I understand now, as I'm writing this blog, that books are what forced me into Ikea again. I also understand that open space is a luxury I can't afford to give up. I can't stop buying books. Can't stop reading. But I simply have to stop keeping them! I've just got to learn to give away books that I've read.

Honestly, considering that now I'm infact into collecting all books of authors that I like, and often find myself eyeing even books which I have ebooks of, and which I've already read (catch22, Asimov's foundation series, Life of pi, Tolkiens trilogy.. etc etc) to name a few as happened  just on my current visit to Kunokinya (as I said, I actually pickedup Dune hardcover, even though i've read it already maybe 3 times)... I find it hard to imagine how I'll resolve this one!