De-clutter Now!

So our house is being painted for most of this month. Painting is a nightmare. The dust, the smell of primer and color coupled with the noise all day is tiring and stressful indeed. To add to all this trouble, my family has successfully managed to not throw away absolutely anything for at least 40 odd years. And I ain’t kidding or exaggerating.

So, we got tonnes and tonnes of things stacked, stuffed, neatly tucked and sometimes randomly thrown here and there all around the house. Every room has these special cabinets and wardrobes that are never opened but have things for a rainy day. Then of course there are all those trinkets that my parents and my sister collected over the years to sit and look at longingly someday (luckily, I have managed to get rid of all of mine recently). Each thing I plan to throw has a sweet memory attached to it (ignoring the fact that the memory was lying in a dark corner of the house for close to 30 years without anyone even noticing it). Things that were valuable 10 years ago, somehow never depreciate and they still hold the same value (yeah I am talking about the spider-web covered vase sitting on the top of the transom for so long!).

Finally after shouting, crying, pleading and brainwashing, my mom got ready to get rid of 2 or 3 small items in our house. But, she put a condition that I can’t throw them away, I need to donate them to poor people. Now, I know that India is a poor country and 37% of the people live below the poverty line. So, I had to somehow find these poor people and donate them stuff. Donating money is one thing, but imagine donating a vacuum cleaner to a poor person. In the last 2 weeks, I have visited NGOs, poor neighbourhoods (yeah the slum-dog millionaire style ones) and even asked random poor looking strangers to take away stuff for free. But as you guessed, I have been unsuccessful.

The moral of the stressful story? If you have not de-cluttered yet, go start doing it NOW. Stop accumulating stuff at home (just to throw it away later!). I found some excellent tips online to reduce your clutter. I stand by my earlier statement that every 6 months, vacate your house and move. Its the easiest way to frugal living!

Mosquito Magnet

Continuing with my rant on my animal attractiveness, for years I have noticed that mosquitoes love biting me. So much so that, every time I went out with a group of friends, I would be the one who would complain about mosquitoes biting while others were leisurely enjoying the trip. I am like a mosquito magnet, and if someone wants to have a good time outdoors without the hassle of applying mosquito repellent cream, they just invite me along.

Most of my good intentioned friends advised me that mosquitoes target me because I am fat. Their logic was - fat people = big = more blood = feast for mosquitoes. So apparently mosquitoes look for fat people and then they party (Yeah, once I heard a mosquito sing – “I got a feeling, tonight's gonna be a good night” - when she was biting me).

Being the gullible being I am, I meekly submitted to my fate, till I actually bothered to look it up on the internet. Apparently mosquitoes have 3 types of sensors. One of the sensors that people like me stimulate is because we emit more of Carbon Dioxide and Octen. Finally, I have figured that its not my size that attracts them (Unless you argue that Carbon Dioxide emitted by a person depends on his size!). So I blame my Octen.

Crow dropping syndrome

These days, I have been blessed by a lot of crow excreta dropping on me at odd places. So a few times it happened while I was casually walking outside in the evening, and once it happened in office during my lunch break. And all this in the last few months. I looked up if crow droppings have any religious significance, and lo behold it actually does. Can you believe I am gonna be ridiculously rich real soon (or not!)?!!

I didn’t find any research on the internet about statistical probability of bird droppings on humans (PhD aspirants – nice topic for you to research!).  So for a while I thought I had a very active outdoor life and hence the probability of me being blessed by crows was high. But the reality remains that I am a lazy bum and I hardly bother to go out in the park.

I think I am the kind of target that crows like to drop on. My head from above looks like the fly in the loo that we have been trained to pee on. I guess while crows feel like attending nature’s call they patiently perch on trees awaiting potential targets (like my big head) to approach them. And then while we walk across, they compete to drop perfectly on our heads. Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they don’t. That explains the soiled shoulders and backs besides the heads. I have realized that I should never ever make the mistake of looking at the sky with my mouth wide open (yeah, star gazing not for me).