A KonMari Consultant's Hack For Saving Time & Money At Home
Your Tidy Half founder and KonMari® Consultant Esther Tan uses a nifty gadget to compliment the home organising process
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Keeping your house neat and in tip-top shape sounds great in theory… until it comes to the time where you actually have to do it yourself. Sometimes, even with just a few small tasks, we procrastinate until they grow into a multitude of things to do, and we become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff to do in the house. Throw in a full-time job, juggling the kids, spending quality time with your partner and carving out some personal time for self-care — how does one get anything done?!
You can cultivate good home organisational habits from the start with a system set in place, then purchase a label printer like the Brother P-Touch Cube Plus to help identify your belongings.
Photo credit: Brother International Singapore
Available in two models, the P-Touch Cube series enables you to design, preview and print from a wide range of labels to organise your home. All you’ll have to do is download the Brother Design&Print2 app, connect via Bluetooth and start customising your labels to suit your own purposes!
And unlike the old label makers of the ‘90s, you can express your creativity in any way through the many templates available. The dedicated app includes helpful descriptions of fonts, tag types, and suggestions for different categories of label applications. The P-Touch Cube Plus is also portable (so you can bring it everywhere you go), and its chic design doubles as cute home decor item when not in use.
But don’t just take it from us — even professional organisers such as Esther Tan, the founder of Your Tidy Half and a certified KonMari® Consultant, is a fan of using it to organise everything in the home, including workspaces and even children's belongings. “The Brother P-Touch Cube Plus sparks joy for me as it is fun and easy to customise different labels. By using labels, keeping the home neat is a breeze,” Esther shares.
“When you apply the KonMari Method® at home, you become more intentional as what’s left are items that make you happy and support your lifestyle. Organising with the use of labels compliments the tidying process as it provides the final touch to the space.”
Here are her tips on how the P-Touch Cube Plus can help you find joy in your home through tidying using the KonMari Method®.
Apart from aesthetic purposes, bins can keep your pantry organised — using bins helps support the system created for the individual living in the space. Transferring dry goods into sealed storage containers can help keep food fresh longer, reduce food waste, and even prevent an infestation of grain-chomping pests.
“Decanting is something you can do in the kitchen for items that are always restocked, and this will help to prolong their shelf life,” Esther shares. “You can use labels to help you remember what is in those containers as well as to indicate the expiry date.”
Demarcating kitchen zones for different activities will help make your experience in the space a lot more efficient. This will ensure a good flow, and you won’t waste time looking for say, your child’s favourite bag of chips.
“Zoning out the kitchen pantry or fridge using labels can help you manage inventory,” Esther advises. “With this, you will know when to make the next grocery run and also when to restock your favourite snacks. This helps to save you money since you will not have any expired items or end up buying more inventory that needed."
Ever heard of the phrase that our environment is a reflection of our mental state? Well, according to psychologists, the environment with which we surround ourselves is very often a direct expression of where we are emotionally. And so, in order to work efficiently, it is very important that our workspaces are tidy, to keep ourselves focused and in control.
According to Esther, “Organising stationary and electronic items using drawers with labels can help you to increase productivity, making it easy for you to find whatever you need when you need them.”
And if you’re the sort that gets overwhelmed with paperwork, Esther advocates going through your papers and creating a system by only keeping those you need. “For papers, tidy them by discarding what you don’t need, and what you can find digitally.” As for the rest of the documents that you might keep — these are items that you might need to refer to such as manuals, warranties, and important documents — she recommends filing them into specific folders and labeling them so that you can reach them conveniently when you need to.
You might be the parent, but that doesn’t mean your kids can’t do their part in keeping their spaces tidy! “If you have kids at home, you might be spending more time than you want to try to keep things tidy or trying to find specific things items around the house. Using labels for toy storage can encourage kids to put back their toys after playtime,” Esther shares.
Sometimes, no matter how organised and on the task we are, there are those days when we wake up late or are too tired to pack the night before. We’re human, and it happens to the best of us. To save time from an early morning scramble, label your kid’s belongings so that you’ll be able to grab whatever you need quickly.
“When it comes to items that the kids bring out or bring to school, these are easily identifiable with stick-on and iron-on labels,” Esther shares. “Having a system for your kid’s belongings can help you stay on top of your own busy schedule.”
The Brother P-Touch Cube retails at $188. Visit Brother International Singapore's website for more information.
A Brother special brought to you by The Singapore Women's Weekly.