How to spend time at home during Quarantine

In an age of Social Networking, when your worth is measured by the number of connections and the depth of your network, Social distancing is a very far-fetched concept and very difficult to digest. With all the shopping malls, movie theaters and offices locked down; with all the sport matches and mass gatherings cancelled, I hope you are a responsible citizen with full respect of this mandate made by the government and reading this article sitting in the happy nook of your home.

Although we might be caught up with “working from home”, considering the time spend daily to get ready and commute TO and FRO from office is saved big time and we are stuck with a lot of free time and with very little idea of what to do with it. Some people have been reportedly struck with depression with sitting at home and not been able to socialize. Hold on! Here are some tips to help you get over with it!

• How many days have you thought about de-cluttering all the unwanted mails, the extra icons cluttering your desktop, the duplicate files and folders eating up the space in your mobiles and laptops, pictures and screenshots no more required and movies and videos you would no more see. Well, this is the perfect time to delete those trash files, sort, clean and arrange for more free space.
• This is a great time to catch up with your school and college friends through video calls and phone calls, call your relatives whom you never got a chance to call back and made some excuse about office meetings or semester exams. Specially, you need to talk to your grandma and grandpa, because due to their old age they must be feeling much more threatened than us and need more moral support.

• In this time of lock-down, I don’t think house-helps are still available and hence, this would be a great time to test and use your culinary skills, clean and arrange your room in the exact way you always wanted to do it. Although, this is something you have to do under compulsion in case your house-help does not turn up, but think about it! You can carry out all those fat-cutter recipes you always wanted to, or try out those fancy baking videos from Youtube that had you drool over all these times.
•  How about taking ideas from Youtube on room decoration and trying your hands on them? One disclaimer: Here I never mean to say you buy items from online platforms to decorate your room because in times of Coronavirus that is very dangerous. You can simply cut out flowers, figures, paper chains or decorate using fairy lights. They can make your room look amazing.

• This is a great time to hone your hobbies and take up something that gives you pure happiness! Dust off that guitar, take out your music notebook and simply play it! Might be a little rusty at first, both the guitar and your efforts, but trust me you are doing great! Practice singing, painting or start your own blogging channel. You will find so many sites that teaches foreign language and also gives a certification. Go for it!

• This one I don’t think I need to tell you! Take absolute liberty to binge on movies and series on Netflix, Amazon Prime or Voot. You can try watching Game of Thrones, Friends, Witcher, Good place, Hunters, Peaky Blinders, Narcos, Big Bang theory etc. Some hindi series are also breaking the glass ceiling such as Kota factory, Family man, Asur, Sacred Games, Ghoul, Special Ops etc.
• How about engaging in elaborate skin care, hair care and D.I.Y.s and pamper yourself to feed your skin and hair with all the nourishment that they yearned for so long. Men especially suffer from a lot of tan and dandruff issues and women too.

• To remove tan, take a slice of tomato and rub it all over the tanned area for 2 to 3 mins, keep it for another 5 mins and then wash it off. Another remedy is to take a dollop of home-made curd and add Haldi paste to it. Mix the 2 ingredients really well and apply it all over the tanned area and leave it on for 10 – 15 mins and then wash it off. These 2 remedies effectively remove tan with no side effects to worry about; however, do a patch test in the skin behind your ears before using them fully. For dandruff, mix a few drops of lemon (provided you are not allergic to it) with coconut oil and heat the mixture. Then massage the warm oil mixture all over your scalp and leave it for 2 hours. Then wash your hair with a mild shampoo. You need to do these 3 to 4 times to get rid of dandruff completely. Other than these essentials, go for a thorough skin care routine consisting of cleansing, scrubbing, masking, toning, serums and moisturizing. Correct me people if my sequence is wrong, I’m not a beauty blogger. This is a perfect time to take care of your cracked heels, dry hands, body polishing etc.

• Enrol yourself in online platforms such as Udemy and Coursera and get a thorough knowledge of the technologies and skills that are driving the World now and are very essential to get a good job. As per my knowledge, you can do courses on Analytics, Quality Control, Big Data, Machine Learning, Python, Six Sigma, Accountancy Basics, Corporate Finance, Supply Chain and Logistics, SAP, Java, Business Report writing, Communication skills or can be anything under the Sun that might boost your growth. You may also start preparing for any competitive exams that you are planning to take and gain an edge over your peers.

• Read books and lose yourself in them! Books are man’s best friend! Take out those novels, self-help guides, Classics which you had bought with a lot of enthusiasm but never got time to read them. No more excuses now!

• This is the best time to stop and reflect, to wait and think, to rewind and replay your life, to think about the mistakes you have made, the lessons learnt and what you want from life. Hence, write down your goals, one short term and another long term and plan accordingly. Especially, financial planning would require some amount of research or you can also get in touch with your Investment assistant. Decide on how much you want to invest, your risk appetite, the debt-equity proportion you are interested to invest in and the financial instruments you are interested. This is a good time for a long term investment in Mutual Funds, Gold and other precious metals but risky for short term investments. But a prudent and calculated measure will take your finances a long way.

• If you are a student, this is a great time to do some work from home internships or jobs on content writing or any subject you want which will not only give you some industry exposure, but also give you some money along with a certificate that you can show in your cv when you go for a real job interview.

So that’s all about how I suggest you do to spend a quality quarantine! Let me know how you are spending your isolation days in the comment section below! TIA.