Fun Things to Do During the Staycation

As everyone knows, the safest way to keep healthy during this outbreak is to remain in “quarantine” at home. Even though online school helps to keep things busy, there still seems to quite a lot of free time that used to be spent walking around school or going to public places. In this historic time, there are a wide range of interesting options to explore safely away from the virus and here are a few of them.

First, a home theater. Real movie theaters have been shut down around Shanghai due to the threat of sharing enclosed spaces but that should not prevent one from enjoying television at home. In fact, an argument could be made that this alternative is vastly superior in a number of ways as one can bring their own snacks and talk to their heart’s content. The Oscars Award Ceremony was during the first few weeks of the outbreak, and has introduced many great movies to the public. These include gems such as Joker and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. If these don’t strike a chord, many films were supposedly snubbed by the Academy and the horde of angry comments across every platform can serve as an equally useful guide. If television is more appealing, sources such as Rotten Tomatoes and esquire.com might imply that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to watch all the great shows of 2019…but the free time afforded to us by COVID-19 begs to differ.

The new age of receiving groceries makes cooking so much easier Photo courtesy of Pixabay

If there is too much sitting around and staring at screens to be palatable, some cooking in the kitchen might be just what the doctor ordered. This has already become somewhat of a trend, and it’s a skill that will undoubtedly come in handy in the future (unless subsisting entirely off of instant noodles in college sounds appealing in which case, by all means…). Delivery services are still in function for groceries and makes it easier to obtain ingredients than shopping at what could very well be a Corona-infested supermarket. Food blogs can be narrowly filtered down to different taste preferences and recipe archives (such as New York Times Cooking or kitchn.com) contributed to by groups of professional cooks can even provide a weeknight dinner plan. And of course, video tutorials come aplenty. With a very probable appetite for something new, basic cooking skills can easily be learned, and are great for showing off on social media.

While this may seem obvious, this glorious period is a perfect time to reconsider health choices. Though maybe an excess of time spent at computers cannot be avoided, there are still some steps that can be taken. Namely sleeping. If homework assignments are being pushed back, this may be affected, but without a rigid school schedule, it is entirely possible to shift some things around to maintain a healthy number of hours every night. Or, before bed, some of those body products you stole from that one hotel but never looked at for the last 3 years could be unwrapped and used for some free pampering. Organic homemade remedies work too and can come at an extremely economic price straight from the fridge. There is a lot of DIY out there to experiment with, and can certainly improve your rapidly declining mental health to some extent too.

So there you are with your cucumber face mask and questionably made DIY gear and you get up to get to get your fifth glass of soda only to realize that the trip to the fridge has become a borderline herculean task. Exercise, can’t live with it but can’t live without it eh? Not to fret though, basic PE workouts can still be done at home, and a simple Goog–Baidu search or two can easily light the path to an active lifestyle in your human sized hamster cage.

Homemade body care ingredients Photo courtesy of Pixabay

If nothing else, this is a great opportunity to strengthen relationships. Luckily, everyone else is more or less in the same boat and is likely highly accessible via their technology. Tools such as Zoom don’t have to be limited to mandatory video conferences but can also utilized for friendly interactions. While spending so much time with family can grow tiresome, it is a good opportunity to learn new things about one another, and how to get along…if you haven’t torn each other to shreds yet that is. Terrible things can bring people together and if not personally suffering from the Coronavirus, this situation can bring people together to find creative uses for all this time.

Featured Image-Looking out at the outside world Courtesy of Pixabay

by Sophia Shan