So yesterday I wrote about decorating your apartment in India, and I pointed out one of the biggest issue one will face here : clutter. In Switzerland apartment building have lockable basement cells allocated to each tenant to store their unused items: suitcases, Christmas decorations, old books, ski gear…so that the inside of the apartment remains fairly clean and organized, and in my family we also had a lockable parking cubicle in our building as well these doubled as storehouse for all other items we used more often but not often enough to keep in the flat.
In India you are going to have to learn to do without that, parking bays in apartment buildings are open so you don’t have a space to store stuff away. Basement cells do not exist either, which means all the stuff you use occasionally need to be crammed into your home. For a lot of people that means buying iron wardrobes commonly referred to as Godrej Almirah, they are functional, lockable, but cost a lot more than they probably used to, and they aren’t always pretty to look at, not to mention that they take space, if your rental property comes with wardrobes already, you won’t have much space left for yours. DH and I never bought a Godrej Almirah, most flats in Bangalore have built in wardrobes, and in Mumbai we always picked out flats that had them.
In our old 600 sq.ft. rooftop apartment we used the top of the wardrobes to store our mess, and our kitchen was big enough and had an overhead concrete shelf close to the ceiling on 3 walls, living a lot of space for all these les frequently used items. In Navi Mumbai our flat had a tiny extra room that was designed as a live in servant room, but like most we used it as a storage room, the problem was it got insanely humid during the monsoon and due to proper ventilation planned in that room things did mold (to show how much care is put into servant’s wellbeing for those who have live ins!)
When we shifted back to Bangalore we agreed a 3BHK was needed so we could have a separate room for our study which also meant extra wardrobes to store all our crap.
The problem arose when we faced a relocation to Mumbai last July, 3BHKs in Mumbai itself are costly, so we were forced to downsize to a 2BHK, and even these are smaller in Mumbai than in Bangalore. Granted the one we live in right now is big by the city standards, it still meant, one wardrobe less to store crap, and we didn’t want to blow money on an eye sore of a Godrej Almirah either.
So we used what we had and came up with this :



Our flat is fortunately well planned enough so that the washing machine area is inside in the narrow hallway, this is the view from my kitchen door, there is a well designed drain and water tap to hook the machine, and some space on the side to put a storage unit, since we didn’t want to blow money out. I thought outside the box a little. In Navi Mumbai we had purchased a ugly looking steel shelf unit to put in the storage room, in Bangalore it migrated in the kitchen to act as a pantry shelf, and in our current place this was the only spot it could fit in, and since DH didn’t get the heart to throw away all of his useless books, we put them in that ugly shelf along with my tool box and other stuff. The problem, is it was even more of an eye sore when loaded, and right smack in front of Ishita’s room, and we didn’t want her to star unloading that shelf every day so we needed to hide the mess.
The 3 BHK we left in Bangalore had 3 bathroom, all with shower curtain rods, so in the common bath we hid the cleaning products and gear as well as the baby pram in the shower behind a colourful curtain. The curtain became useless in the new flat because for the first time ever since I moved to India we have separate wet and dry areas in both bathroom, separated by a glass door, so I used a bit of cloth hanging rope, passed it through the holes of the shower curtain and tied it to the top of the shelf unit, and voila! mess concealed and hallway looking pretty!
The curtains covers only the front of the shelf as you can see:


And we still have some junk on top of the shelf, but the gap on the side is handy to store the laundry detergent on the high shelf and easily accessible when loading the machine while still being out of reach of Ishita. I have plans to do something more functional by asking a carpenter to fit shelves above the washing machine, and Dh swears he’ll get rid of the books one day, so maybe we will end up gaining space in these shelves at one point, the pram and baby gear fit on top of one of the bedroom wardrobe and the other wardrobe has all of our suitcases. The point is we found a cheap innovative way to hide our crap away in our new significantly smaller apartment and it even looks pretty enough, the steel shelf did cost us 3k and is one of these utility shelf that can bear enough weight and is versatile enough to be used in various rooms, should we have gotten a Godrej Almirah we would have had to shell much more money and it would not have been practical in our Bangalore 3 BHK flat anyway, this one did the trick look how functional it was as a pantry shelf:



And it didn’t eat up all the space in my small kitchen there, it was bad enough the fridge didn’t fit where it should and took space in my living room :



Useless disclaimer: You might see a few more decoration post, the Summer has hit, the humidity is peaking and I just refuse to leave the comfort of my home for more than absolute necessary trips in the open air, meaning I won’t have much to say about the Indian outdoor until it cools down a little. Ishi’s school ends this Friday, I don’t get to hang out with the other moms at the playground after school due to the heat and my social activities with other stay at home moms will start again in June. Ishi will be in Sumer Camp until May end though because I still need to get my quiet time and she still needs to be with other kids her age without frying in the sun.
June will see my first hosting of a kitty party, Ishi entering Nursery class, and my Birthday, then the first week of July we will travel to Lucknow for Ishita’s birthday, so with the rain things will look a bit more alive.

I’m an interior decorator, and even if I’m no longer working the field and building sofas, hanging curtains, laying rugs and giving tips to customers, this is still pretty much part of who I am.
And decorating and furnishing a home in India is much different than in the West. First the concept of decoration and style in the home is a very new concept in India, space management included. Then due to climate constraints you can’t do the same in a urban Indian apartment as you would do in a urban Swiss one, this simply wont work.
Until recently living in a family house was quite common, the home was functional, generally had a big drawing room and tinier rooms and that meant enough space to put heavier dark furniture in the living room where they would stand out and make the appropriate impact. My in-law’s house is one of these, the drawing room is so huge that they partitioned it with a curtain with one side being the storage area hidden from the guests, and the other being the living room with one big wooden sofa and 4 armchairs, made of sculpted wood and padded cushions to sit on and there is still enough space for a high divan coffee table, corner tables and a TV stand.
Try to fit all that in a modern apartment building or an independent house that had be designed for rental and you will suffocate, if you even manage to cram it all in the first place.
In a city like Mumbai don’t even try, most decently sized apartments rarely exceed 1000 sq. ft. of carpet area with 700-800 being the average, older buildings have also an awful more wasted space in the form of long narrow hallways and crazy corners that more modern buildings managed to eliminate.
This new type of living needs a new type of furnishing, and sadly the market hasn’t completely caught up with it, at least not in the affordable prices range of home furnishing.

To live in such quarters, you need to have a more western approach to what goes into a home, heavily carved furniture while looking stunning in a big family home, will dwarf a room in your average apartment and keep your eye from noticing the space around you. If you still want a desi feel to your home, look for smaller furniture and floor sitting solutions such as ottomans, you can still find wooden frame sofas that will not impose themselves in your space, look for less carving, and neutral fabric on the seat’s cushions.
If you want to go for a more modern approach, keep it simple and functional, and that is where it might end up being tricky, big store brands such as Home Stop, Home Centre and @Home have things that could work for compact urban living quarters, but they also come with a higher price tag and the quality isn’t always up to par either, though there is a way around it, should you know a good carpenter, browse online, get your inspiration from websites, ask relatives to bring you a IKEA catalogue from abroad, or if you are good at designing furniture draw your own and ask your carpenter to do it custom made for you, it won’t be dirt cheap, but it will cheaper than a big store model, and will in all like hood be of much better quality.
The guidelines with furniture in India be it desi style or international, go for good material, a hardwood piece of furniture will last you far more longer than the cheap laminates I’ve seen around here (which by the way aren’t even cheap).

I’ve made the mistake to buy laminates, they last you 3-4 years and then they loose shape, chip and look tacky in your space, especially if you bought them from a road side independent dealer, the biggest mistake we made was this one:



These are two bookshelves that we bought with wedding gift money in 2006, 3500 a piece in a store in Infantry road in Bangalore, this picture was taken in 2009 3 years later, and while you can’t see it here, some of the laminate went off, one or two of the cabinet doors lost their plastic handle and the shelves started tilting, and we didn’t even use them at their full capacity storage, 7k well wasted, these shelves never made it out to another flat, one got trashed in 2009 shortly after this picture was taken, and the other got donated to our made when we relocated to Navi Mumbai in 2010.
The small desk where the laptop is was bought in Chennai in 2004, our dog chewed it, the laminate started chipping a year after we purchased it, the ergonomic sucked, and the weight of the computer made the wheel mounted at the bottom break, I don’t remember how much we paid for that thing, we had a limited budget back then, so it was cheap, but in the long run still too costly. The corner desk is the only laminate piece that we kept until our recent move as there was no space for it in our new place in Mumbai so I sold it to a friend, but that is the sturdiest, bought in Home Stop during the sales for 5k if I remember correctly.

We knew a good carpenter in Bangalore so I designed my own furniture and asked them to be made of rubber wood with a dark taint finish:

I had a drawer unit made to store baby clothes and diapers, and what I drew is exactly what I got, the drawer unit is now in my living room and hold my craft supplies, after 3 moves it sadly got damaged a little, but nothing that a carpenter can’t fix, the price of that drawer unit was 14k if I remember correctly all hard wood in visible areas and the bottom of the drawers and the back is made of plywood to cut cost a little, we never saw any similar units at less than 19k in stores across town, design, size and quality taken into account, so we saved 5k and 3 years later it is still in good condition minus that crack in one of the drawer panel curtesy of careless packers and movers.
The desk next to it is also my design, DH needed a laptop/reading desk as he was working from home and the corner unit had our desktop PC on it, this was again rubber wood and plywood and did cost 4k, we still use that desk, it is still in mint condition, and we have no plan of getting rid of it anytime soon.

My crappy shelves got replace by this in 2009, though this is the picture of where they are right now in our current flat in 2011:

The bookshelf is on the right, the cabinet on the left is yet another really crappy laminate thing we bought because our old Bangalore apartment had not much storage units in the kitchen and we didn’t want to invest a lot of money into a pantry cabinet we weren’t sure would be needed should we move, this cabinet ended up in the storage room in Navi Mumbai sucking humidity during the monsoon which made the laminate bubble, the packers and movers broke a glass door and if you go on my craft blog you’ll see I gave it a makeover. But back to my designed bookshelf, I wanted basic, minimalistic and functional for it, so that it could fit anywhere. If you browse this blog home decorating labels you might see it went into various rooms over the moves, the price for it was 9k if I remember correctly, keep in mind my crappy laminate ones cost me 7k so not that much more for something made of rubber wood, this one hasn’t chipped, or lost shape since 2009, my daughter even climbed it a couple of time without deforming the shelves which are glued and nailed into the frame. Again a piece of furniture we plan using for years as it is versatile enough to go anywhere.
And then there is the once upon a time DVD wall mounted unit I designed for our living room that now stays in Ishita’s room to hold her toy and books:

We just mounted it lower on the wall so she can reach the shelves, slid the two guest mattresses under it so that it makes a reading corner (when the room is tidy which isn’t often), 4k spent in 2007 and still standing, the only damage is a big dent courtesy of the packers and movers, by daughter used it as a ladder too and it’s still standing.

All this to say that YES minimalistic western style design is possible at more decent prices, we of course have store bought things too, and yes they were pricey but DH knows that when it comes to spotting good quality, I’m good, so since we now have a budget that can allow us to buy quality, we do it. We will never go for laminated MDF board furniture again, we know they don’t cut it.
So yes in short regardless of the style you want to go to, invest in solid wood, and keep proportions in mind.
A smaller space also calls for more hidden storage space and definitely less clutter. A thing I’ve seen is an issue in many an India household, not in the form of decorative items but in the form of lots of boxes of old stuff people find hard to let go of, even in my in-law’s place that is big there is a lot of things that are never used and never will be that are crammed into the wardrobes taking valuable space.
And contrary to homes in Europe, there is no basement in houses, and no basement storage cells in apartment building for people to keep their empty suitcases away when not needed so you need to get inventive there. Since we can’t get rid of the suitcases, they are on top of our wardrobe in the bedroom, but because we are no different than other people, we have our lot of almost never used things too, so when we aren’t traveling, they stay inside the suitcases for storage until one day we will have enough of lugging the dead weight back up the wardrobe after each trip and will get rid of them.

And while we are at the topic of clutter, the European houses I know all have a lot of trinkets and sculptures and figurines on the shelves that I haven’t seen in that much abundance in India, the reason being that here they are a pain in the butt to keep clean. India is a dusty place, I dust in a day what I would dust away in a week in Switzerland, that’s how polluted and dirty cities are around here, so unless you trust your maid to do a good job or you don’t mind spending an hour daily to get your crystal figurines and glitzy photo frames dust free, just don’t have more than one or two accent pieces around.
For us the problem is solved as with a dog and a toddler we just can’t have too man of these things around, the never last long enough anyway.
Better to decorate the space with bright cushions and curtains that don’t cost a fortune and can be tossed in the washing machine when icky

This is a long post, I’ll stop there, more pictures of how to make a space look nice in the future, not that there is a shortage of pictures already posted on my blog in this department anyway.