Organize your Self and Home, Periodically

While at work with the self, home or work-place, everything can’t be handled in as-organized way for the sake of expediency of work. There is nothing wrong in it. Even a society gets derailed from disciplinary norms if periodic corrective measures by judiciary, social reformers and conscience of the people don’t take corrective measures for a long time.

Similarly, reorganizing things periodically becomes necessary to keep things in order. Creativity, productivity and involvement of a person improve if things around him/her are well organized. Organizing has three equally- important aspects – the self, home and the work-place. Organizing a work-place is an exhaustive topic to be considered here. So, I shall treat here on two aspects of personalized organization – self and the home.

Working with a balanced routine is called organizing the self. It is, indeed, division of time between various endeavors of life. For an average working adult, this distribution, for two major heads and five subheads, is given below with approximate percentages of time on daily basis in brackets

For the self -

1. Food and Health matters (2 hours, 8.3%)
2. Entertainment, Recreation and Rest (9 hours, 37.5%)
3. Studies and Intellectual Development.(2 hours, 8.3%)

For others -

1. Economy and work (8 hours, 33.3%)
2. Family and Social Relationships (3 hours, 12.5%)

These figures may surprise many, particularly, such a high allotment of time for rest and recreation, and so low a time for economy and work. Psychological and other studies related to work have indicated that an average person may work with efficiency for 4.5 hours a day only, while we have taken it 6 hours giving margin to individual efficiency and style of working. Persons often present at their respective work places for about 8 hours a day, out of that they spend about 2 hours for taking rest (1.5 hr) and socializing (0.5 hr) in between various phases of work, leaving only 6 hours for effective working. With addition of an average 1 hour of homework and 1 hour for travel to work place, the total effective time devoted to work comes out to be 8 hours a day.

About rest and recreation time, it is important for an average person to have a sleep of minimum 6 hours a day. Added to this, 1.5 hours of rest at work place in between work phases, this comes out to be 7.5 hours. With 2.5 hours for personal recreation and rest at home and other places, the total time for this subhead comes to 10 hours a day, as indicated.

Noteworthy, in the list above, is 2 hours time devoted for taking food and health related matters, out of which, 1 hour goes for taking food with concentration on nothing else, and remaining 1 hour is considered essential for physical activities and other health related matters.

Duration of 3 hours for family and social relationships includes duration of about half an hour spent in socializing while at the work place, leaving only 2.5 hours for family and socializing at home and other places. This much attention to family and social contacts is considered essential, as minimum 1 hour a day is required for the life partner and children only for keeping the family relationship sweet and blossoming. The family gets some more attention at time of taking food.

These durations for different activities are of indicative nature only with no commonly applicable hard and fast rules. Every individual has his/her individual circumstances and way of working and he/she may make changes accordingly.

Home is the place where a person finds ultimate solace on daily basis in between his/her dealings with the external world. It is also the place where the person spends about 60 percent of his/her time on daily basis, therefore, plays the most important role in his/her life and well-being. Since, it is the place where most of the possessions of the person are stored and used, it has the tendency of getting cluttered with too many things in a small space. It is highly recommended to have things of necessary nature only.

The problem of cluttering becomes critical in tropical places where climatic variations are high – summer heat reaching 45 degree Celsius and winter temperature falling to 4 degrees. The people are required to have provisions for dealing with both of these extremities. For example, a desert cooler in Indian homes is used for 3 months only but needs space for all the 12 months of the year. Similar is the case for winter provisions.

In earlier times, different families used to have different things of occasional uses and they used to share these facilities with each other. The trend is still visible in rural India. The urban life is highly individualistic where every family needs to have everything, with many things being rarely used. Affluence also enhances cluttering of homes with people having more possessions than are actually necessary by them as status symbols.

In a home, free space is as important as the occupied spaces for free movements and pleasing aesthetics. Preferably, no two things set touching each other for trouble-free movement, ventilation and illumination for everything of importance.

Maximum attention in a home is needed by bedroom for making it clutter-free for the family to get a full-fledged rest while sleeping. It is the place, along with kitchen, to which women must pay their maximum attention for their higher aptitude than that of men in this respect. Men must concentrate on organizing work-desks and drawing room at home.

Two aspects, critical for a home to be convenient and pleasing to live in, are natural illumination of various places during day time, and natural ventilation particularly of places occupied by people to a high degree. Lack of natural illumination and ventilation make the home to brood infectious insects and viruses adversely affecting health of inmates.

Another critical issue for a home is that water availability wherever necessary and the drain out of it without any overflows and splashes. Presence of water and its accumulation, where not necessary, may cause dampness at the place leading to breeding of insects and worms, particularly, if the place is not naturally illuminated and ventilated.