Ways To Stay Busy While Staying At Home

By Jessie Garten

The Coronavirus pandemic has seemed to throw off everyone’s daily routine. Are you bored at home and feeling unproductive? Sick of scrolling through Instagram or binging Netflix? While the first week of social distancing was relaxing to mentally break from balancing academics, a social life, and my mental/physical health, I felt the need to get back into a routine by week 2. Here are some tips to get back on track while maintaining a healthy lifestyle!

1. Practice Self-Care

Commercials, advertisements, and ads are always emphasizing the need for us to stay safe and follow proper sanitation tactics. While we are always reminded to scrub and wash our hands with soap and keep up with personal hygiene, people still seem to forget about self-care. This is extremely important when staying quarantined. While the basics of sanitation are part of our daily routine, you can add additional ways to find fun in it! Beauty sites offer affordable masks, hydration products, and lotions to keep up with skincare or even DIY hair masks.

2. Stay Active

Staying indoors makes it that much easier to go downstairs and spend hours lounging on the couch with a bowl of your favorite snack. But quarantine doesn’t mean remaining inactive. Despite the closure of gyms and workout studios, alternative options are being offered to help Americans remain on track physically, not matter where they are. Do you struggle to workout on your own and need an instructor? Live classes are offered on various social media platforms without subscription and free to all users. Do you have a stationary bike, treadmill, or love running outdoors? For cardio workouts the Peloton app is free for 90 days! Additional cardio classes are offered free on IGTV through the Rumble and Orange Theory apps. For boosting your metabolism and a variety of HIIT workouts, the Tone It Up is free until April 13th. For individuals who prefer less sweat, low-impact workouts, MWH method offers the first week free. Melissa Wood Tepperberg offers simple workouts that can be done anywhere with your own body weight! When in doubt, take a walk around the block. While we are avoiding social interaction for a safe period of time, it doesn’t hurt to head outdoors and lap around the block! This is great for both your mental and physical health.

3. Spend Quality Time With Your Family

With parents, siblings, and other relatives working from home, we have the opportunity to spend lots of quality time with one another. While this can cause tension in some households as family members get sick of one another, completing fun indoor activities together can create enjoyable and memorable moments. Is your family sick of playing the same card and board games? Try new ones! Trending family games include Jenga, Catan, Scrabble, Rummikub, Cards Against Humanity and more! Click here to shop more. A great way to wind down after a day of working from home, is to have movie night! Streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and many others offer best selling movies. While we are all guilty of binge watching shows by ourselves for hours, a great way to crash on the couch and spend time with your family is to find a live show to watch altogether.

4. Meal Prep

While parents often assume the role of prepping breakfast, lunch, and dinner... help out in the kitchen! With many parents exhausted from long virtual work days, save them time and take over meal preparation. Experiment in the kitchen and find recipes your entire family enjoys! While people often associate baking and cooking with unhealthy ingredients, sugar and oil-filled meals, this doesn’t have to be the case. Load up at the grocery store with nonperishable and frozen items to keep you stocked for weeks. From turkey burgers, to frozen zoodles and vegetables, you can maintain a healthy lifestyle while also staying indoors. Here are some healthy food staples.

5. Unplug & Read

We often fall into spending countless hours staring at the television, but a great break from this can be spent opening a book and reading. While staying indoors and safe is our top priority, through the click of a button we can easily have access to thousands of books. Thanks to Amazon we can get a hardcover book the next day or have instant access to books through audiobooks, the Kindle app, and alternative online resources. There are so many genres and lengths of books available that we rarely take time to unwind and read! Lastly, set goals for yourself. Have another book ready, so when one is complete you can look forward to reading the next one in line. Organize virtual book club with your friends as a fun way to stay in touch.

6. Organize

After the struggle of having to lug all of our clothes, necessities, and other items home from school, our closets are now packed. We are all guilty of items falling off of our overstuffed shelves and taking up space with clothing we haven’t touched in years, but simply hold on to "just in case." Take the time to organize! Realistically create a schedule for places you want to organize in your house or room. While I often find myself giving away hand-me-downs, many people don’t know what to do with their clothing. Both local charities (School drives, outreach centers, homeless shelters, etc.) and national charities (American Red Cross, Salvation Army, etc.) and organizations are constantly appreciative of people donating clothing.