How Staying at Home Has Improved My Life
With a pandemic covering the globe, businesses shutting down, and currently 229 million Americans being asked to stay at home, it’s can be hard to find the silver lining in the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
Being someone who does not work on the front-lines as a medical professional or grocer, I can work from home and take care of my kids to avoid exposure and keep my community safe.
I recognize that I’m lucky to have a job that allows me to work from home. Also, beyond annoying IT issues and the juggling between my work and my kids, it’s pretty much life as usual.
But given my family has spent the last week continually together, there are several good things that have come from the orders to stay at home.
- Sleeping more
- Quality time with kids
- Slowing down
- Calling family and friends
- Quality time with husband
- Virtual happy hour
- Reduced footprint
- New hobbies
Sleeping More
As I’ve mentioned in A Day in My Plastic-Free Life: Part 1, during the weekdays I usually get up at 6am and let my younger child sleep in until 6:30am.
These days I’m letting her sleep in until she wakes up naturally. On the weekdays, I will still wake up at 6am to give myself a little extra time to work. But on the weekends, I let my toddler be my alarm clock and this Sunday morning I woke up at 8am! I don’t think I’ve slept in until 8am since my kids were born!
By the way, the picture above is me pretending to sleep in front of a temple in Egypt. Apparently, my best friend found my ability to sleep virtually anywhere to be entertaining and that became a running joke throughout our trip.
Quality Time w/ the Kids
Since both my husband and I are working from home, we’ve taken 2-hour shifts with the kids so the other can work. Although the change in schedule and productivity work-wise has been an adjustment, it’s been nice to have this extra time with the kids.
Even though they’re still young and need a lot of attention, it’s adorable seeing them play with each other or devise little games to entertain themselves. I’m appreciating the extra time I get to watch my kids grow up.
Slowing Down
Since I’m at home all day, it’s made it easier to prepare food the day of, as opposed to all in a rush on Sunday as I would normally. And even better, my older child loves crepes but they take a little time to prepare so I only make them every once in a while.
This weekend I made crepes twice! Normally, Saturdays are a flurry of activity to get to the farmer’s market and the kids’ activities. But this weekend, I made a large batch of crepes and enjoyed them with my family.
Here’s the recipe for 10 – 12 crepes if you’re interested:
- 1 cup flour
- 3/4 cups milk
- 1/2 cup water
- 2 eggs
- 2 Tablespoons sugar
- 3 Tablespoons melted unsalted butter
Melt butter in the microwave. Mix all ingredients in bowl and stir with a fork to reduce lumps.
Heat a pan on low-medium heat. Add a small 1/4 Tablespoon tab of butter or olive oil to the pan. Using a 1/4 cup scoop, pour batter into the pan and swirl pan to form a circle.
Let the crepe cook until the edges start to brown or until it’s cooked about an inch in from the edge. Then flip the crepe and allow it to cook for another 30 seconds to a minute.
Serve with powdered sugar and/or maple syrup.
Calling Loved Ones
Before the outbreak, my mom used to call once a week to say hi to my kids. It was a great way for my kids to keep in touch with their grandparents and I could tell my mom enjoyed the little conversations.
After the outbreak, I randomly FaceTimed family members one night right before putting the kids to bed. The night after my toddler asked to call the same family members again and now it’s become a nightly tradition that everyone in my family looks forward to!
Quality Time w/ Husband
My husband and I both work a lot. While he focuses all his attention on his job as a physicist, I have my day job, my volunteer job, and this blog. So, there were many weeknights before the outbreak where we would be working on our laptops while the TV played reruns of Modern Family or Big Bang Theory.
Now, nearly every night we spend some time without laptops to watch things together and hang out. The natural first place to start was watching the Netflix Pandemic series and tomorrow we are starting the Netflix Tiger King series.
We’ve also had a lot of quality time during long walks with the kids to talk about and ponder different things besides the Coronavirus. With all the normal weekend activities it’s rare that we go on long walks anymore. So, with those activities cancelled it’s allowed us to slow down and just hang out.
Virtual Happy Hour
I met my best friends on the Ballroom Dance Team at the University of California, San Diego. They’re the closest thing I have to sisters. Two of them were on the same team as me and the other was in my same major in college.
Unfortunately, we haven’t lived in the same city since college. So, we generally only get together every few years. And while I call or text them individually, the three of us who were on the same team together rarely talk all together.
After seeing all the social media posts about virtual happy hours, I texted my best friends and suggested we do one this last weekend. It was the most I’ve laughed in forever and it was wonderful catching up!
I find it funny that it took a pandemic before I had the idea to video conference with my two best friends.
Reduced Footprint
With everyone driving less there’s an obvious reduction in our carbon footprint. My husband and I only leave the house once a week and drive less than ten miles. I go get groceries and he picks up extra items at Target.
While my plastic footprint is about the same, the amount of plastic my kids use has greatly decreased! Since they are not going to daycare, they use no plastic for eating or for crafts while at home. Some days they eat breakfast, lunch and two snacks at daycare. For each one of those my older child use a plastic cup for some sort of drink. (My toddler has a reusable sippy cup.) For the meals, they use plastic utensils and for breakfast they have at least one Styrofoam bowl for cereal and if they want one Styrofoam bowl for fruit. During a week at daycare, they could easily use a full trash bag of plastic. But since they’re at home, all of that plastic is saved!
New Hobbies
As I wrote about in 15 Social Distancing-Friendly Hobbies, now is a great time to consider an indoor hobby! I started trying to learn Italian again. Before the birth of my last child, I started learning Italian but with the lack of sleep after my child was born, that was the first non-essential activity to go.
So, it’s been nice slowly working through an Italian phrasebook and feeling no pressure to get to fluency but learning just for the fun of it.
Takeaways
In general, when your schedule is stripped down to the most basic of needs, it allows you to think about and focus on what’s most important. During this time, I’m reminded that our health and quality time with our loved ones are the two most important things in life.
What about you? What have you learned during this time? Or what good things have happened as a result of the orders to stay at home?
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