Category: Tips and Tricks

It is that time of the year again! The best time when festivals and celebrations come knocking at our doors and there are parties and treats galore. It is my favourite time of the year indeed!

An Ambivert? Not good fun this festive season. Or maybe it is?

Apart from cooking and meeting friends and family, what I love the most is giving presents. You heard it right! I love giving presents. Of course receiving some is great too but I am one of those weirdos who enjoy giving gifts more than receiving them, so much so I bought half a dozen presents in anticipation of Diwali and parties that come with it. It is another story that most of those presents are still sitting in my cupboard because guess what, I hardly got invited to any parties. LOL! Real problems of being an ambivert. Thankfully I have never been the one to have any FOMO and am always more grateful to being home alone rather than being invited to gatherings which make one uncomfortable (read people pulling each others down/ clinging and trying to “demystify” every spoken word) and you leave these places mentally and emotionally exhausted.

Anyhow! When it came to sharing Diwali sweets with some of my closest friends, rather than gifting store bought mithai, I decided to make some at home. That was the easier part. However, I had left the planning to very last minute and I did not have enough time to order custom size boxes. The ones available were either too big to too tiny. After fretting and fuming and almost resorting to store bought mithai I decided to take the packing matter into my own hands as well(quite literally) and that is how this easy DIY Gift/Cookie Box happened !

I happened to be at Ikea to pick up some props for a client’s shoot when I eyed these square boxes which were just the right height and width for my mythical gift box. So, I did a happy dance and gathered what I needed to gather and headed home a happy trooper. For someone who had hated art and craft at school with passion, I was pretty excited at the idea of creating my own Diwali hamper.

Material Needed to Create Your Easy DIY Gift/Cookie Box for Festive Season

1. Ikea square box
2. Cardboard packaging (from your grocery store or even used cereal cartons)
3. Glue gun
4. Baking parchment
5. Muffin wrappers of desired colour ( I used white and gold)
6. Ruler
7. A pair of scissors
8. Wrapping tissue or brown paper as desired to wrap the box in. I used gold net
9. Sweets and snacks and/or other presents for the gift box

Steps to Create Your Easy DIY Gift/Cookie Box for Festive Season

1. The first step is to finalise how many and what gift items would go into your goody box. Once that is out of your way you can finalise the measurements of each compartment . Do not stress, it doesn’t have to be precise and cast in stone. If things start to look awry you can always move the compartments around and re-glue. Having said that having a clear plan helps save precious time
2. Once items are finalised, next is to ear mark and measure out the compartments where those items need to be placed
3. Then based on the above measurements cut out the cardboards half a centimetre smaller than the inside width of the box where the cardboards need to be placed; the height of these cardboard “dividers” would be the same as the box(see the final image below)
4. Glue the pieces to the board and to each other (wherever needed) and let them sit for a couple of hours so they dry well before proceeding to the next step
5. Make parchment paper pouches if you have sweets/cookies that do not fit muffin liners. I used this simple technique to make mine. But there are many other tutorials out there you can choose from depending on your requirement & the time you have at hand
6. Before you start filling your gift boxes make sure to cut out the wrapping paper and tissue to the right size (large enough to gather and wrap the gift box)
7. Next place the gift box in the centre of the wrapping paper and start to fill out the box
8. Then wrap, tie, tag and we are good to go!

What went into my Diwali Gift Box

1. Til-Mawa laddoo
2. Cheese Biscuits
3. Besan Barfis
4. Coconut Laddoos
5. Gulkand filled fig and pistachios bliss balls ( I will share the recipe on the blog soonest)
6. Namakparas or nimkis
7. A couple of sparklers wrapped well in tin foil so it doesn’t interact with the food
8. Decorative tea candle holders from one of my favourite Hong Kong brand- Adorn Creations Home Decor

Let not the above ideas limit your imagination but just be a guide to create your own unique gift box. Ikea has great options for boxes in all sizes, shapes, colours and materials or just up-cycle small cardboard boxes at home with pretty gift tapes, glitter and coloured paper.

KITCHEN! The place where magic happens, probably one of the places where us cooks spend maximum time during the day creating heart-warming and nourishing food for our families and loved ones. And yet more often than not, it is this place which gets neglected the most when it comes to order and organisation.

My case is no different. We moved to our apartment almost an year ago and while I spent a considerable amount of time thinking, planning and replanning most of the house, I didn’t give too much thought to the kitchen. Fortunate to have finally found a decent sized kitchen unusual in compact Hong Kong apartments , I got a bit carried away and failed to correctly utilise the storage and space it offered; kept things wherever they fit without putting much thought to maximise space and storage. Needless to say, with a method like this, my cabinets were soon overflowing and I was loosing my mind trying to find things and swinging between one shelf to the other when cooking. With very limited time at hand and the need to put together a full-fledged meal in that duration, it was clearly not helping that I was spending substantial amount of that time trying to find ingredients. I kept procrastinating until one day while cooking I ran out of turmeric powder and being pretty sure I had enough in stock started to look for some. I looked for a freaking 20 minutes before I finally found it. I could have cooked what I was cooking in less than that.

So, I finally decided to reorganise . The big R word was ominously looming over and I wanted to do it without spending too much money and use most of the stuff I already had. My first step was to raid Pinterest , look through as many kitchen reorganisation hacks as possible and save ideas. Pinterest never disappoints! I found two amazing home blogs- Making Home Base and Clean And Scentsible which gave a direction and helped me organise my ideas. I figured that once I categorise the storage areas based on a certain logic and then utilise the height of the shelves rather just the horizontal space, it would be a good start.

The IKEA 365+ food storage boxes came to my rescue. Wide enough, tall enough and stackable. Another product which worked wonders in adding storage space in my tall cabinets was GREJIG, which actually is a collapsable shoe rack but hey it is all about hacks with these amazing products isn’t it? Notice in the “AFTER” image below how the rack without occupying much space itself, adds another level of storage. An absolute find!

My next step was to maximise the storage space for little sachets which could be just stacked on top of the other without eating up precious space that could be used for larger boxes/bottles. Ikea to the rescue again- OBSERVATÖR has to be one of my favourite new products from them. It is so versatile and works like a charm in maximising storage in tall spaces and the best part is no drilling required. Just a word of caution, measure your shelves well to make sure once you clip these baskets on, they do not come in the way of shutting them well because sometimes the space between the shelves and the door is negligible which means once you hang the OBSERVATÖR, the doors won’t shut completely.

Do notice, how moving the shelves around and adding the baskets has freed up so much space and I could actually fit in more stuff from the other cupboards too. And this space became my “Stock Storage”- so basically stuff which I would need to refill my daily consumables cupboard or items I would not need on the daily basis.

BEFORE

After reorganizing a kitchen

The next step was sorting my spice rack. Now, we primarily cook Indian meals but a lot of our meals have Asian and Western flavours and that means a whole lot of spices and keeping them easily accessible becomes so important! The VERIERA is just the right size and fits right into the small space next to my stove. I was even left with some space next to the sink to place an OSTBIT which doubles up as our chopping board and tumbler holder.

I also placed another VERIERA in the cabinet above the spice shelves. This cupboard is now designated for all my baking and breakfast supplies leaving some room for my coffee mugs too!

The KNARRA BASKET came in handy in storing bulky items under the table, mostly heavier rice and flour packets which are best stored at easily accessible places. The HÄLLAN cabinet was the perfect size and went right under our kitchen table to help store my baking and blending pots, pans and other equipment away from sight. Their white colour made sure they went with rest of the kitchen walls and didn’t look ugly and bulky.

The top part of dish drainer BESTÅENDE went on top of one of the baskets and is the perfect storage for my onions/potatoes/ginger/garlic.

The other pot and pans went into cabinet right below the cooking range along with the plates and bowls. The remaining bowls and Tupperware went into a pull out drawer next to the sink.

So, to summarise, my kitchen storage is now broadly divided into the following sections:

1. Grains & Pasta
   1. Spices & Condiments
   2. Baking & Breakfast
   3. Cooking pots,pans and plates
   4. Baking and Blending equipment
   5. Stock and Snack cupboard (with the snacks strategically placed on the top shelf away from prying hands of kids and adults alike ;))
   6. Bowls, tumblers, and Tupperware

It may not look like it but it took me almost half a day to get the entire kitchen reorganised and this did not include all the mental pre-planning that went into it. So, I do hope that while this post is helpful to you in your own reorganisation, but do remember to use this as a reference to make a plan that suits your needs because they may vary from one individual to another. Also, I am a succour for recycling so I did not discard anything which could be reused except for a few boxes that were damaged and also, bought only the bare minimum from Ikea which I absolutely needed.So, always always look around the house and see what you can reuse and what can be discarded.

And most importantly, I would love to hear from you and see how you ended up using this post to do up your own little kitchen.

Happy Reorganising !

[kkstarratings]