Some Tips for living a minimalist Lifestyle!

Minimalism is not about having less its about having enough and realizing it.

When I think of minimalism I think it to be a path way to reducing stress in life.

Some Practical Tips that I would recommend

Take a closer look around you

Your house could be a good starting point as it is easy to minimize and the results are tangible.

Closet:

What I do to clean up the closet is to have 2 boxes - one that would go to Goodwill /Donation and one box for trash. I grab all my clothes out and keep only those I really need or use and the rest go either into the donation box or straight in to the trash. I realize I had been holding on to some clothes thinking I would fit in to them one day or just because it looked cute but dint realize I have out grown that dress a long while back *sigh*

Kitchen:

Look in to your pantry and am very sure you will pull out that can of beans or flour which is hiding deep in the shelf with expired dates on it. We some times walk through the grocery aisle and pick stuff up thinking we may use it but never end up using it. This is something all of us do. A tip for this would be to never shop when you are too hungry and always shop with a list of things you might need for that week or month. I personally like to shop for one week at a time.

Mails/ Bills:

We all know this is unavoidable. A tip to minimize this would be to set up to pay all the bills electronically. Assign two boxes one for junk and one for mails that you would need to act upon (like coupons, notices etc) and once the junk box is filled up you may just trash it.

Books:

I know most of us like holding physical books in hand and reading it. But unfortunately it does take up a lot of space and guess what most of these books are available online. I recommend you to use e-version of the books instead of holding on to physical copies of the books

Friends:

Aside from all the material processions, with the growth of social media, we tend to have way too many friends than what we need. I know this person who has 3463 friends of facebook. When I met him recently, he told me he doesn’t know 80% of them in real. They are ‘facebook friends’! I have heard school -friends, college-friends, we live in the same community-friends, I have even heard hey she/he is my friend’s friend but what’s this facebook friend? One who you don’t know really?

I think its better to have fewer friends who are real people with real emotions and people who really know you. Tell me what is the point in just having huge numbers?

And finally, Money - We keep chasing huge paying jobs and are never satisfied with what we earn. We lose track of the time we spend with our people, we lose track of the food we should eat on time and most importantly we lose track of our health. I agree we all need a good lifestyle for which we need money but we need to find a good balance. A great tip for this would be to be able to say enough is enough and learning to relax and just run your own race. Like I said before, Minimalism is not about having less its about having enough and realizing it.

These are some tips I believe would be a good start to practicing a minimalist lifestyle.

Small Pantry Organization

Organization is really my favourite thing to do and I get inspired by so many blogs and videos online. Every once in a while when I need some motivation to organize or clean I look for these videos or blogs and that instantly drives me to organize things at my house. So with a hope that this piece of writing would bring a similar effect on any of you who might be looking for some motivation at the moment, I put down 4 points that would be helpful in having an organized pantry

Take out all the stuff you have currently have in your Pantry

This is the first step and this step is easy to do . Just take EVERYTHING  out. Don't think about organizing at this point

Clean out the shelves

Just wipe down the shelves and line them if you like.

Sort it out

This is my favourite step. Now Just look at every thing you have and throw away what ever has crossed the expiration date. If you have duplicate of the same thing try and see if you can keep them in one zip lock bag or one container. I sort them according to flours/cereal products, Legumes , Spices, Dry items like papad, sundried vegetables etc. sugars and sugar products.  You may choose to organize it in a pattern that would best work for you. I use plastic storage bins to fit each of these catagories. This helps me to take what ever I want without having to pull out all the other stuff and also this system of keeping in bins helps you to track what you have better.

Set it up

Now put them back in the order  of most used items to least used items. For eg I have spices and legumes boxes of top shelf because that's what I use most often and the next shelf has the other boxes.

Also on a side note, I  keep my bag of rice and idly rice in my pantry placed on top of a cardboard box that is flattened out. This helps to keep away rice from the moisture that gets transpired from the wooden floor in to the rice sacks that hence avoids any sort of infestation. This seemed like a simpler hack than buying  different storage containers to store huge quantities of rice/wheat etc especially when you have a small pantry.

 Hope these tips help! :)

Here is the Video:

Yummy recipe using Fox tail Millet - I loved it!

Including millets in your diet is in a rage now and I have always looked for interesting ways to include millets in my diet too.
Recently I got my hands on  a pack of  Fox tail millet (Thinai in Tamil), I made pattys out of it and added it to my sandwich and they tasted delicious. Here is the recipe:


Thinai/ foxtail millet - 1 cup
boiled potato- 2 nos
water - 3 cups
grated carrots - 1/2 cup
sweet corn - 1/2 cup
Salt to taste
Garam masala 1 tsp
Chilli powder - 1 tsp
Rava/sooji - 2 tbsp

Oil - for shallow frying


Method
Boil the millet in water and let it cook completely. Cool it and leave it aside
Boil potatoes and mash them well
Add grated carrots and boiled corn to the potato and mix well.
Now add this mixture to the cooked millet and blend.
Add Salt to taste, chilli podwder, Garam masala and mix well and make them into pattys
slightly Toss the Patty in Rava/sooji
Add 1 tsp of oil on a dosa tawa and shallow fry on one side and then flip it over to the next side.

For sandwich
Avacado - 1 no
Bread -  Toasted -2 slices

Cut the avocado and mash it well.
Add salt to taste
Now spread this on the sides of toasted bread
Sandwich the patty in between and enjoy!
You can  add spinach , lettuce  in the sandwich and make it taste even better.
Note:
Patty also Freeze very well and comes in handy for a quick week day dinner or as evening snack

My Favourite Indian Breakfast!

My husband and I are both very fond of Idlis and dosas. We love to have idlis for breakfast and dosa for dinner. It quick and easy to make these after a long day at work once I have the batter ready. The recipe given below works well for me.

For the batter:
In bowl 1
Idli rice - 4 cups
Flattened rice (aval) - a hand full
 In bowl 2
Urad dhal - 1 cup
Vendhayam (fenugreek) - 1 tsp

soak for a couple of hours and then I grind using Premier Wonder Table Top Wet Grinder . I have been using this grinder for almost a year now. This is really light to handle and very easy to clean .
I highly recommend this grinder.
Once the batter is ready I just  add salt to taste and allow it to rest for a few hours(4-5 hours) before I put it in the fridge.
Fresh home made idlis and dosas, in my opinion, is a class apart and just cant be compared with what you get at restaurants.

Here is a pic of my lovelies <3

Inexpensive Stairway Decor

The apartment we live in has a flight of stairs inside that takes you up to the living room. I was wanting to decorate the stair way walls for quite some time now. But, I didn't want to invest in huge art pieces. The theme for the living room is bronze so I wanted the stair way décor to be in the same color scheme brown/bronze/gold and such.
So here is what I used - I got  several roundish table mats from Walmart in dark brown and  pinned it up randomly on the wall. That kind of gave the wall a classy chic look. This was coordinated with the focal piece which is a wall hanging from Kirkland . On the other side, we decorated the wall with a couple of scenic pictures  from our recent trip to Portland. This kind of adds a very personal touch to the wall.

Video clipping:

Fenugreek-Hibiscus Hair Pack!

I love to try different hair packs. Here is a recipe of a simple hair pack with just 3 ingredients!

You will need
Fenugreen - 2 tbsp.
Organic hibiscus powder - 1 tsp
Coconut oil - 1 tbsp

This measurement is for a shoulder length hair.
So, to make this pack, The fenugreek seeds should be soaked in 1/2 cup of hot water for  three hours or overnight is fine too.
Filter it out and take the water and mix in the hibiscus powder and coconut oil.
Apply this mask and let it dry for a couple of hours before you wash your hair.

This pack used over a period of time reduces dryness, dandruff  and controls hair fall.
It leaves the hair feeling soft and manageable.
Note:
You can also add a table spoon of curd to this mixture.

Eco friendly Non Toxic Products for your home!

Today am going to talk about these eco - friendly products I got introduced to at Marshalls -
Grab Green  Eco friendly products. First of all let me tell you this is not a sponsored post and all opinions here are unbiased and completely from my personal experience. To begin with, I chose to write on these products because I love them!
I tried only a couple of  their products namely - Grab green dish soap & Grab green all purpose cleaner

Am a strong believer  of using all natural products. I do think its as important as going organic in food we consume. Am aware that most people now want to use chemical free, all natural products but its still got the "expensive" tag that comes along with it.  But I guess I didn't think twice to grab these bottles because of the benefits it offers.
Grab green dish soap - I got the red Pear and magnolia 16Oz bottle
Its a viscous , transparent  liquid packaged in a 16Oz plastic bottle.
For starters, The packaging is very attractive, highlighting details like
Non toxic, Phosphate free, bio degradable , no animal testing
The ingredient lists naturally derived ingredients which is very  attractive.

With the actual use of the product. I realized the product is very effective on  scotch burns and tough food particles. It doesnt leave my hands dry. Its gentle to use.  And yes, I dint need to use too much of the product for getting the dishes squeeky clean. A pea size amount of the product was good enough for several dishes. I love it and highly recommend this product.

ALL purpose cleaner
I got the red pear and magnolia fragrance in this as well. This is non toxic,phosphate free, bio degradable,ammonia free, formal dehyde free. There is a clean sweet fragrance to this product. This does a good job in removing grease from my counter tops, I clean  my wooden furniture, stove top, and even bathroom tiles to remove grout and it does its magic. Again, I don't use a lot. A small amount of this product sprayed directly on the surface goes a long way and gets the surface clean.
But the downside according to me is, it doesn't work very well on mirrors, glass surface. As a "all purpose" cleaner I would expect it to work on glass as well. Nevertheless, its a great product for other surfaces and its ideal for homes with small kids since you don't them to be exposed to too many chemical cleaning products that come in contact with the furniture or surfaces the kids have access to.

Price on both - $5 each
I cant wait to try their other products! Chk out their products on their website