Here is the Homegirl Summary. Homegirl is a self-help book by a Pakistani writer Nemrah Ahmed. This Summary is my learning from the book. The book contains tips and tricks to become a homegirl.
Homegirl summary:
Home Girl is written in a fictional way; where the writer has created a fictional character- Hunain Yusuf – who leads the reader towards learning how to be a homegirl, and in doing so, she teaches the readers how they can also become one.
In the book, Nemrah Ahmed writes on an uncommon topic existing in Muslim Pakistani society – Personal and Environmental cleanliness. Most teenage girls don’t understand the importance of being clean. However, it’s super important.
Read more here: What Homegirl is all about?
There are 12 chapters in the book. Some chapters are 2 – 3 pages long; others are 6 -7 pages each. Let’s begin with chapter one.
Chapter 1: Who is a Home Girl?
Many people think that a homegirl is superhuman. A girl who can do 100 types of things alone; she can cook many dishes, clean her whole house, design the rooms, stitch and bake, hence she can do Everything. But this is not a homegirl. In Chapter one, Hunain Yusuf tells you about a real homegirl. A real homegirl is the one, who knows how to be responsible towards herself and other people.
Chapter 2: My Incomplete Faith (Mera Adha Imaan)
Chapter two of homegirl tells you about the importance of maintaining personal hygiene. It reminds you your mistakes about cleanliness.
If you don’t take care of your body, it starts to sweat and smell. It’s a sign that your body needs your attention. Allah talah wants you to take care of yourself that is why “Cleanliness is half of the faith.”
Ever wonder why your dresses and abayas smell even after you sprinkle perfume over them?
Because deep inside you think that perfume’s fragrance can hide your bodily smell. But, the opposite happens. your body’s smell along with the perfume’s leftover chemical produces an even stronger smell. To avoid it, you should take bath before wearing party dresses.
Chapter 3: Those Beautiful Faces (Wo Pari Chehra Log)
Chapter three instructs you about taking care of your face. As a homegirl, your face needs your attention too; it’s the first expression of yourself. Faces often smell due to two facts;
- Bad breath
- Poor skincare routine.
So first of all, keep your mouth clean. Brush your teeth thrice a day; once in the morning, second before sleep, and third after every meal. Miswak can also remove your bad breath. You should also keep a breath mint or elachi’s packet in your bag. Tooth flossing is also important to keep your teeth clean.
Secondly, protect your skin from dust. Wash your face 2 times in addition to your everyday wadu routine. In those additional times, use a good facewash. Let your face dry on its own, and use a good moisturizer after you wash your face. Say words of appreciation and comfort.
Chapter 4: Wetness (Yeh Zara Si Nami)
Chapter four is all about smelling good. Mostly in summers, your body sweats even more than usual. This is why you need to have a personal hygiene routine. Your armpits stores sweat into its hair, therefore you’ll need to wax it off. Wax is the safest and finest way to remove your armpit hair after laser because this way your hair growth reduces. Use a good deodorant that lasts for 24 hours. Take a half-bath every night. Drink water to stop excessive sweating.
Oil your hair; keep them oily for 24 hours maximum. Use conditioner after shampoo. Take care of your nails, don’t keep them too long as nails stores dust in them. Keep your jewelry, and other accessories like Mobile phones and their cover clean. Wear ironed clothes, it takes 9 minutes at least. Wash off your makeup every night with a cleanser and toner.
Brush your hair every night and tie the leftover air from the bush, read “Bismillah” over it and throw them into the dustbin. Don’t trim or pluck your eyebrows, it is not allowed for Muslim Women. Wash your chaddar and abayas after a single use; keep 2-3 of them available at home. To avoid smelling on special days, women should use Eau de toilette. Stop using perfume outside your home, instead use all the above-mentioned ways to smell nice but not too strong.
Chapter 5: My Nest (Mera Ashiana)
This chapter is all about maintaining Kitchen Cleanliness.
Chapter 6: Free from Burden (Bojh say Azaadi)
Chapter six is about being free from extra material that your home contains. It’s about being Clutter-free; being free from the love of things as it doesn’t let us take out our things.
To do this, divide all material of your home into 3 portions;
- Needs
- Charity
- Garbage.
But where should you start from? Well take start from your own room.
Clean your cupboard; change the newspapers, spill coopex dust under the newspaper and keep pills of farnail in the corners. Divide your clothes; Make dusting wipes from the oldest clothes and give some wearable clothes to your house helper. You can also give your old wearable designer clothes to your cousins, friends, or even a house helper. Now make 3 – 4 clothing lines, and pile up 4 suits at least on each clothing line.
Arrange your dressing table. Throw everything useless. How? keep the most important things. Ask yourself three questions.
- Have you used them the last year?
- Would you find happy to keep them on there?
- If you need to keep one bag with you on a trip to the mountains, would you keep that thing in it?
If any two answers are yes for a thing, then keep that there, otherwise, throw them (because mostly dressing table contains useless things). De-clutter your shoes too and keep the important ones in the box.
Now is the turn for your kitchen. Throw the expired spices box, and check if your current spices box is free from insects. Keep 1 dinner set for the guests and use other ones at home.
Chapter 7: Order (Tarteeb)
Chapter seven is about arranging your dresses, makeup, shoes and other material in a pretty way. Order your life. Everything you have should be kept in order.
Organize your clothes. To do this, make small departments in your cupboard, wherein in one department you’ll keep household clothes, in the other ironed clothes for guests visiting, and rest according to the needs.
Arrange your shoes. To do this, buy a big carton and wrap around it a gift paper that matches your room’s theme. Put into those cartons your shoe boxes and place them in the bottom section of your cupboard.
Organize your dressing-room drawers. To do this, select which drawer will be used for makeup, deodorants, brushes, tools, and other stuff. After you’re done with your selection; make dividers in each drawer so that a big drawer can be utilized for arranging many things. Take a cardboard and make it the size of your drawer. You need to make sections from the cardboard into your drawer, and set items in them. Put makeup items, brushes, buttons, and all other items in an organized way into those dividers.
Do not leave the surface of your dressing-room with a lot of clutter, instead make baskets and keep things in them. It’ll be easy to clean the portion beneath the basket.
Organize your purse too. Make dividers into your purse with the help of elastic.
Arrange other things of your room too. Keep your study table clean. Place only necessary furniture in your room. Do not settle anything in the corners of your room to make it look bigger. Make a small portion for your namaz. Do not place the bed where your foot is direct towards Kibla.
If a wall is viewable from your room’s door, then put a big mirror over there, with a bigger size compared to a door. If a window is viewable from your room’s door then put there a light-colored curtain, keep the length of its rings near to the ceiling. So that it looks lavish. Clean your room for at least 3 minutes every day; set a timer.
Chapter 8: Makeup (Sola Singhaar)
Chapter eight is all about Remodeling your home. As a homegirl, If you don’t have a lot of money to renovate your home, then you must re-model it. It will cost less.
How will you do this?
- Don’t paint your old furniture, use lacquer instead. Espresso or black lacquer will look amazing with every theme. Use lacquer for kitchen cabinets too. Make a dark theme floor for the house.
- Change your old sofa’s fabric with suitable ones.
- Keep in mind that your walls, curtains, and sofa sheets should make a theme.
- Renew your doors, by painting them and changing door handles.
- Use Blinds for room windows; clean the window glass. Stick a wallpaper on one of the big viewable walls. You can put a fireplace in one of your rooms too.
Chapter 9: Light (Roshni)
This chapter teaches you how should you fix your home’s lights. As a homegirl, you know that no matter how pretty you’ve decorated your home, in the end if suitable lights aren’t fixed, your home will lose its charm.
It’s the turn for your home lights. Depression enters your home when you start loving the dark. Satanic bodies live in the dark, therefore keep your home bright with lights.
Lights enter your home in two ways
- Natural Lights
- Artificial Lights
Beginning with adjusting natural lights in your home. There are further are two sources of Natural light; 1) a Room ventilator 2) Windows. There’s also another source that is Mirror.
Let the natural lights enter your rooms. Clean your room ventilators (Roshan dan) and keep a net curtain over them.
You can place frosting paper on some of your windows, to welcome natural light while not invading privacy. Third, you should place a big size mirror in your lobby, dining, and drawing-room; it will enhance your room’s size.
Now is is the turn for adjusting Artificial Lights.
Use white light bulbs for your bathroom, dining room, kitchen, and study room. because it needs bright lights. Bulbs should be round.
Use warm/yellow light bulbs for the lounge, drawing room, and bedroom. Because you rest there.
Two round LED bulbs (white or warm depending on given suggestion) and two table lamps are best for a big size room. you can also use, floor lamps and Fairy lights.
Chapter 10: Colouring (Rang raiz)
This chapter includes tips & tricks to select suitable paints for your home and other important information like how to start painting; what to do before painting; what tools do you need etc.
Begin with one room. Ideally, your doors should be painted bright white or espresso. Roof-top should be painted bright white. While the floor should be dark or white marble.
For walls, select your ideal paint color by considering your floor, furniture, and curtain color theme. You already know warm colors are for the kitchen, drawing room, bedroom, and lounge and cool colors are for the dining, bathroom, and lobby.
If you don’t want to paint all four walls with one colour – you can also make one accent wall. For cool areas select two cool colours and for warm areas choose two warm colours. i.e, warm color combinations are light gray and dark gray; yellow and purple; green and pink, etc.
After you decide on a combination, paint one wall with the darker shade and the rest three with a lighter shade.
Select paints that are latex-based, spot-free with a matt finish — No shine or gloss.
Before painting, cover the doors, lights, furniture, and floor with a plastic sheet (tape it) or a large thick cloth. Wear an old dress, cover your hair with a plastic bag and eyes with glasses.
Once you’re done with the walls, doors, and furniture color — remember 1 thing!
“Each room should consist of three main colors”
You need three combinations to decorate your room. Walls, floors, and doors should have the same combination that is 70% of your room. Your sofa and curtains should represent a similar color combination that is 25% of your room, and the last third color should be 5% present in your room.
There are a lot of tiny but important details related to painting a Pakistani home, that cannot be summarized all at once here — Read the book to learn about painting your home A to Z.
Chapter 11: Ethics are first (Adab pehla Qareena hai)
This chapter teaches you the importance of ethics in life. No matter how pretty your home looks and how clean you appear; if you aren’t beautiful from the inside — no beauty will compensate for it.
Don’t mock or ridicule your teachers. Don’t fight with them over deducted marks, take it as a lesson to perform better. There may be moments when you genuinely feel that they oppressed you, ignored you, and favored others — but don’t change your attitude towards them. Never stop respecting them. If you meet them outside your institute, always greet them with a smile, positivity, and respect. Why should you do it anyway? Because you don’t want to spread hate. You believe in goodness. You are you! Your good behavior can bless you with silent duas without you even knowing.
Don’t be bitter towards your parents. There will be times when they point you out, they won’t like your extreme closeness with some of your friends, they won’t like your mobile usage, or there will be idea clashes but one thing you must remember — never stop respecting them. Because they are gifts from Allah. The Almighty will ask you about them on judgment day. Allah took away parents from young children. He took away some’s parents in front of their eyes. But He didn’t take them away from you! You cannot mishandle his gifts like that. You cannot imagine the amount of pain, stress, and hardships your mother went through to take you in this life. Be kind towards them.
Chapter 12: Allah’s Blessing (Allah ki Rehmat)
This chapter teaches you about hospitality. A homegirl knows how to treat guests.
She knows if guests come at around 11 am, she should serve them tea with biscuits. If they come around 1 pm, she should serve food, if they come around 4 pm, then tea with something like biscuits, sweets or any fried thing, if at around 8 then also food, and finally, if guests come around 10 am, then tea with anything light to eat should be served to them.
Salty material is served in the beginning (like, kabab or fired things). Then a sweet dish is served with tea (like biscuits, cake, sweets, etc). But salt and sweets should not be mixed while serving.
A homegirl should keep tissue paper, napkins, forks, spoons, and plates in the tray first to leave on the guest table. Then, serve a fired thing, before setting salty things on the table. A water jug is preferred over a water bottle. The cold drink should lay on the tray with glasses while entering the drawing-room. Crockery and dinnerware should be the same with no different plates or spoons.
If guests like something, for example, dry fruit, nimko, or sweet dish, then a homegirl refills it. She put all dishes on the guest’s side one by one, so they can taste everything.
Homegirl wears a genuine smile and behaves mannerly. She talks about common interests among guests. She also comes to leave them at the door But when she becomes a guest at someone’s place, she always informs them at least 30 minutes before going there. She brings gifts to guest’s place — If not every time, then at least after 2-3 meetups. She eats the simplest thing first. She eats with manners — as she doesn’t let her spoons or mouth produce noise. She doesn’t breathe in the water or blow on the beverage. And most importantly she always becomes a sweet guest.
Note:
There are many brief details and long but necessary topics that I couldn’t share here. I only shared a shrieked summary with important points. However, Homegirl is so relatable and thought-provoking book. Nemrah Ahmed writes as she is talking to us like an elder sister. She lets us know about our routine mistakes without making us feel guilty or bad. As a self-help book for homegirls, I’d say it’s worth reading.