5S Housekeeping at Home

(Also refer: Home Page for All Home Tips http://home-tips-tricks.blogspot.com/

5 S- Five Steps to Prosperity and Success for Your Home

1. SEIRI (Sort out and dispose)
   Eliminate unnecessary things. Keep only what is needed. Undertake major cleaning. Save money on buying unnecessary additional storage equipment and space.
2. SEITON (Place for everything and everything in place)
   Establish a neat layout to fix storage places and the methods, and stick to the rules. Eliminate search time and therefore, stresses and strains. Save money by not purchasing the items now easily available at home.
3. SEISO (Scrub, dusting and cleaning)
   Understanding that cleanliness is a form of inspection. Establish state of cleanliness commensurate to your needs. Involve every individual. Achieve zero grime and zero dirt. Give a definite time each day for cleaning.
4. SEIKETSU (standardize the methods of 5 S and environmental upkeep)
   Establish standards for maintaining. Add color and use innovative visible management so that abnormalities show up for early action. Also make sure that you contribute to environmental upkeep.
5. SHITSUKE (Self discipline and training)
   Feeling accountable and setting examples to maintain the established procedures of orderliness and neatness. Full participation in developing and practicing good habits.

Also refer: http://5s-housekeeping.blogspot.com/ (5S Housekeeping)

Do you find following things within fifteen to twenty seconds after they are needed?

• A particular medicine; say antacid tablets, pain killers, your daily medicines doctor prescribed, sprain cream etc.
• Postage and related material: say stamps, envelops, inland letters, post cards, glue, gem clips, stapler, staple pins, stationery etc.
• Bank documents; like pay-in-slips, check books etc.
• Income tax related documents; like papers related to your investments, previous years’ income tax returns etc.
• Electricity/power bills, telephone bills, water bills, corporation tax bills etc.
• Telephone numbers and addresses of your particular relative or friend or your or your spouse's particular colleague.
• Writing pad and pen/pencil to take down the messages over the telephone.
• Locks and keys of your house, scooters, car(s), cupboards, safe deposit lockers, office, the keys and locks of your suitcases, brief cases etc.
• Desired pair of shoes/footwear, matching clothes, hairpins, kerchief, nail polish, lip stick etc.
• Children’s school bag, books, notebooks, their shoes/footwear, socks, progress cards, i-cards, date of birth certificate, their particular toys, ink bottles, pens, pencils etc.
• The stitching kit like pairs of scissors, sewing needles, threads of particular colors and types, buttons of various types, measuring tape, knives etc.
• Towels, toothpaste, tooth brushes, soaps, detergents.
• Candles and match box when the light/power goes off suddenly.
• The tong, the gas lighter, the hand mixer, right kind of serving bowls, right kind of cutlery, cups and saucers.
• The cooking recipes you so diligently took down from a TV program, or copied from a magazine or web site.
• A particular novel or book/magazine you wish to read today, now.
• Your housecoat when suddenly some guests arrive and you have to receive them at your door.
• The money or change you kept some where.
• Your or your spouse's i-cards, credit cards, pass ports, club membership cards etc.
• Shoe polish of various colors and types, shoe brushes, shoe laces etc.

If your answers to many of these questions and such other possible questions are in negative or you have hesitation in answering them, you have large scope of improving your housekeeping following the above mentioned 5S Housekeeping steps.

Did Any of the Following Things Happen at Your Home at Least Once in the Past Six Months or One Year?

• Your kitchen or other rooms of the house got flooded with water since somebody in the house kept the taps open.
• Electricity/power bill suddenly shot up during some months because the family members are not in the habit of not switching off the air-conditioners, heaters, lights, fans, geysers/boilers, ovens, computers and other electrical appliances when not in use.
• The sauce/ketchup, pickles, jam, shampoo, oil bottles’ caps were not securely placed and so got dropped and broke and the contents were wasted.
• The computer, printer, mixer, fans, clocks/watches etc stopped working suddenly as too much of dirt and dust jammed the inside of these machines and you had to pay heavily to get them rectified that too not to your satisfaction or you had to buy the new ones with lots of extra expenditure not planned.
• You had to buy an additional cupboard (storage space) or two to store the things because the existing storage space had fully been utilized.
• You found cockroaches and spiders etc many times in your utensils, cups and saucers and in many others items at your home.
• You or any other member(s) of the family was injured by the shaving blade which was used up but not disposed off and was rusted.
• Did you find rusted hair clips, rusted safety pins lying on the wash basins of your home and the rust spoiling the wash basin and also the possibility of using these rusted items by you or the members of your family?
• Your bath room was not dry and as slippery and as a result some one slipped off, fell down and got injured or got electric shock due to wet floor (if he/she was an old person, it can be very dangerous).

If your answers to many of these questions is in affirmation, you need to consider giving 5S Housekeeping a high priority for your home.

More on SEITON- Place for everything and everything in place

A large number of home makers wish to be efficient. And they should be. Why not? They wish to hurry up everything because of lack of time and compulsions of punctuality for every activity.

Then, for accomplishing it, they take out everything that is needed to finish up that job within the time available. For example, take cooking. You have pressure on you of completing the cooking in time since you, you spouse and children have to start for their work places on time. You pick out from the cupboards all the needed utensils, all the gadgets, all the raw materials and spread all of them around you, all at a time on your kitchen platform and island thinking that placing everything around you would allow you easy access to them. But the very clutter around you really becomes an obstacle in efficient working. Plus, you are compromising on safety due to the clutter. It looks untidy and loses aesthetics.

After the cooking is complete, you find that there are hundred things on your kitchen platform and island now and you just do not have time and energy to put these things back in the places meant for them. It's time up for you; you and everyone else in the family have to rush out to accomplish the next tasks ahead. So, you leave the kitchen in this kind of unorganized condition. Then, in the evening, you start from where you left, take out some more things to do the evening's cooking and the clutter keeps mounting. The whole of kitchen starts looking untidy. The retrieval is difficult and time consuming. It's unsafe.

Rather than doing this, plan out your cooking sequence. Take out one thing at a time from the cupboards that are just a step away from you in the kitchen; they are not far away from you. After you have used that thing, put it back in the cupboard in its place immediately. The time taken to use that item is the same- you are not taking any extra time or losing any time. You are as efficient. Do this for each item of use. Take it out, use it and place it back in the same condition in which you took it (if there was a lid on bottle, place it back securely) and position it in the same place from where you took it out.

You will take same amount of time and there would not be any clutter around. The kitchen will look tidy and will be a safe place to work.

Give it a try.

Benefits of Adopting 5S Housekeeping at Home

• Home looks clean, tidy and beautiful.
• Feels great to live in such a home.
• Impresses ever one.
• Improves hygiene at home.
• No one at home wastes any time in searching and retrieving the things. Please read an article on how to save twenty year of your life at URL: http://wow-idea.blogspot.com/
• Home is a safe place now.
• The environment around is clean and healthy.
• There is no clutter around.
• You don't need to spend money to procure additional storage space or equipment for that clutter (had you not done the 5S Housekeeping, the clutter would have increased). So, you are saving lots of money. (For saving money, read more tips at URL: http://save-money-ideas.blogspot.com/

You will experience more and more surprising advantages as you start implementing 5S Housekeeping at home.

Also refer: http://home-tips-tricks.blogspot.com/