The sunrays teeming through the drapes wake you up. And you spring out of bed in a hurry. How could you’ve slept through so late. Is it noon? You could be late for work. Or could’ve missed an appointment. Then it dawns you. It’s Sunday! 

Even on a holiday morning, you’re still tied down to a few things that are routine to you. A warm cup of coffee or getting the daily sudoku right, there’s always something without which you can’t wake up completely. Much like how you’re tied to your own needs and desires, everybody else has their own set. Each life is as complex as the other, yet when you look back on an entire decade that’s passed us by you’ll see that life keeps moving forward as a collective. 

Every decade moves people ahead together. Especially when people grow old in a country growing forever young, change is a little bit more back and forth. The clinking of glass milk bottles is a fond morning memory from the people who grew up in the 70s. And if there’s ever proof of true-blood craftsmanship with glass, one doesn’t need to look beyond whiskey bottles. Yet we would laugh at our mother’s when they would fill the discarded ones with water for re-use. Most of us cringe thinking about how our parents used pillow covers to carry rice back home from the market. Or how our fathers stuck to their monotonous steel dabbas while we lined up for a new plastic one with dazzling colours every year before school kicked off. Then the 10’s came, bringing the #woke wave with. 

Somewhere between micro-plastics slipping their way into almost everything we sink our teeth into and the rise in the amount of aquatic life getting affected by plastic pollution, single-use plastics just stopped making sense. The change comes along when people switched out of the auto-pilot way of living and questioned something that had become an inseparable part of their routine. 

This mindful questioning of norms can change a lot more than we think it can. It takes us from ‘how life is supposed to be lead’ to ‘how do we really want to live our lives’ and ‘where do we see ourselves every day’. This is where unroutine comes into the picture. 

Unroutine is a way of life. It tells us that norms just don’t exist at an institutional level, but also in our homes, within our routine. We often mistake beauty as something that’s just standalone. So we hoard the best posters for our room. And adorn the living room with the best paint and showpieces. Unroutine raises the question: 

“Why just stop there?” 

If we take a long look around us, most spaces are filled with things that aren’t aesthetic (translation: ugly) but are really useful. And the rest where they’re beautiful, but don’t do much else. Unroutine brings the best of both together. It redefines beauty as a blend of what looks good and also does good. In the world of unroutine, beauty not only serves a purpose too, but it stays mindful of the environment. 

It sinks its teeth into a culture and reimagines traditional wisdom to fit into the everyday. And then it takes every day out of every day. If the things that we use in our daily things were as beautiful as everything else that sits in our house, we’d start creating special experiences for ourselves. 

If our everyday dinnerware was as beautiful as the bone-china that we reserve for our guests, simple meals get elevated into something that we pamper ourselves with after a tiring day. Who would mind if a cutlery stand looked as beautiful as a vase? Or would the storage jars really need to hide in cabinets if they were crafted beautifully with ceramic, still keeping your the contents sealed in safely? 

The crusade against plastic gets a beautiful twist with unroutine. Terracotta or glass may not be as convenient as plastic, but both of them have a stronger upside, for you and for the environment. Placed next to either one of them, you’d never give plastic a second look. A thoughtfully crafted glass bottle fits snugly into your bag and defeats the purpose of single use bottles or the ones that we hoard. And if it comes with a beautifully crafted ceramic stopper that’s painted by artists, it gives you something unique to carry around. Something that’s your own personal style statement. 

Unroutine is all about taking a norm, and breaking it not to differ. But to make a change in our life that elevates our everyday life by not just serving a purpose, but doing things the right way. So what’s the first thing you’ll use it to change around you?