HOW HIGH IS YOUR JUNK QUOTIENT (JQ)?

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Do you know how high your Junk Quotient is?

Don’t get me wrong. I just want you to turn on your ‘JunkoMeter’ today and measure your junk quotient (JQ).

Just to share with you, I measured my JQ few days back, and I found it to be reasonably high.

Do you know how I did this?

Becoming a JI (Junk Inspector) few days back, I made a survey of all the rooms and collected all the evidences and proof. And I found these after scrutiny.

• In my home, a gems box is now an eraser box, a shoe box stores Hot Wheels cars, a heavy hot wheels sit as a paper weight.
• Old cups, mugs, purses and jam bottles are plants pots.
• Old Duppatas are household covering sheets and old cotton Sarees are customized into Sarees keeping bags, also serving as sheets for shelves and clothes wrapping bags.
• Book marks and cards made up of posters are kept in book shelves. And used chart papers are converted into inspirational wall quotes and few are blooming as flowers decorations on bed room walls.
• Big carton boxes are Anvay’s toys resting room and are giving challenge to the best advertised Hope Shop 18 products and one side used A-4 size sheets are canvasses for his Picasso like paintings.

There are many such junk products and ideas and I can write breathlessly about all of them but that would be too long, time consuming and would not serve the purpose of this blog post. So, just imagine these as few specimens out of my junk workshop and to know more about them and see more, you are most welcome to visit my home.

But why my JQ is too high?

On its diagnosis and analysis, I found its history rooted in my childhood days and adolescent years. I immediately boarded my memory train and found these traces:

• I used to watch The Good Home Show and many other TV shows like this on DD 1 with my mother and after the end of the show used to experiment with making of many things. I tried my hands at making wall hangings from broken bangles and ship made from ice cream sticks, toy train made form used match boxes and sweaters of my doll made from left out wool. Patch worked bags and note book for my teacher- teacher games. I also used to act as an anchor of my imaginary show, describing and sharing details of the products made with my imaginary audiences.
• Next and the most powerful influence on me , as I can remember now,  was of my biology teacher, Mr SX Saxena, under whose guidance I did a project entitled, ‘Improvised Dustbins to Prevent Solid Waste Disposals’ in class XII. And this project was selected at regional level and I visited KV, IIT Kharagpur as part of Jawaharlal Nehru Science Exhibition for Children in 1999. Returning home after this project, I was emotionally drained, because the project was not selected but, since I was in love with this project and high about its objectives and benefits, I felt as if I could make a big difference to the whole world and to my city. Everything will be green and healthy and the world will look so beautiful and perfect. The dream and power to change the world, the way we want!This is how we think when we are too young and adolescent, don’t we? So this was one of the most significant influences.
• My many friends and colleagues were also of great influence on me. And after marriage, my mother-in-law, I could say, acted as a true Waste Management Professor for me. Like me, her JQ is again too high. She gave me the best of home management tips with practical demonstrations and how to make best use of them. Reuse, redesign, rethink, explore and be creative and experimental are her best home making tips. Her influence indeed is very deep and profound on me.

So, based on learning from the above, I concluded that Junk too has life and at times like doctors, we too can give them a new shape and life. And what it requires is nothing but little time, efforts and creativity on our part  and the results are always worth.

What do I suggest you now?

Try to work out on honing your JQ. Who knows but this JQ could be a new sought after ‘Q’ after IQ and EQ required in the 21st Century?

• So, decide to take out some leisure time from your busy schedule. Rest. Relax and then get ready with your team. You and your kids!
• Saturday and Sunday can work best for you. Take a carton or any container and turn on your Junk GPS on and make a survey of all rooms and pick up all the items that you consider are junk or waste. You can categorize them as stationery items (old books, magazines, note books, diaries, news papers ), plastic products, metal things and clothes etc. There can be perishable things also but these go straight into you dustbins and would require little more effort which I am not talking here.
• Make sure that you start picking up junk from one room first and then move on to another room next. Do it step by step and don’t exhaust yourself in one go. You can find emotional connect with many things but just pick it up if it does not serve any purpose. later on you can decide about this. Too much clutter or junk can serve as energy trapper also, as one of my friends says, so be alert and vigilant in the process.
• Segregate the collected junk into separate categories. Now take them into your store room or attic room. Check what is of use and what could be reused and given a new shape and a new look. Now keep them separate. Pack the remaining junk into a box and seal them to be sold off to junk dealer.
• Whatever left unused and reused for two to three months, let it go to the junk dealer.
• Clothes and stationery items could easily be donated. You can visit any nearby orphanage or give them to poor children. These gifts from your end become source of abundance joy for those who could not afford these things at such ease.
• Now enjoy more positivity and free space in your mind and rooms and celebrate your victory with your entire team of kids.

So, don’t wait for too long.  Work on increasing your JQ with your Intelligent Quotient( IQ) and Emotional Quotient (EQ) . And don’t be surprised to see, how with a little touch here and a creative fold there you too, could convert a junk into a piece of innovative look.Unleash your creative zeal and sharpen your JQ with your little kinds and feel like Picasso and Rock garden creator Nek Chand.

And if you want to call me a junk maniac, junk lover, junkophile, junk artist, junk picker, junk architect, junk designer, junk juggler or a junk manager for that matter, I won’t mind. Since you too have become a part of my group now.