Day 7 – Thursday, 2 April
The first week of lockdown has come to an end. Here are seven things I’ve learned in the process.
- Nurture your close relationships. There’s never been a better (and more) time to spend with your other half, family and children at home. Carve space for quality time together. I love having my husband with me around the clock, although he does get on my nerves sometimes! It’s perfectly normal after eleven years of marriage; however, my husband and I are still going strong. Not even this imposed lockdown is going to interfere in our relationship.
- Clean up, dress up and show up to work. It’s tempting to stay in your comfy pyjamas all day when working from home (unless you have a conference or video call, but you can still make do without pants). Dressing up for your home desk adds that little bit of normalcy to working from home when you are used to your daily office hours or, like me, miss going out and work in bustling coffee shops. Alternatively, great-looking loungewear does the trick.
- Cleaning your home can be therapeutic. You will have to make time for daily chores – washing, ironing, cleaning, and dusting your home – even when you’re too busy working. You have to do everything on your own, which becomes time-consuming if you enjoyed the luxury of employing a domestic helper (which is quite the norm here in South Africa, particularly with young working families). Our maid used to come weekly on Thursdays – the cleaning day in our household. Now she is on forced paid leave until after Easter (depending on how things go with this lockdown). Appliances like washing machine and dishwasher are working harder than usual these days – and so is the coffee machine! But for many other cleaning activities, there’s no alternative to hard-working hands. Lockdown time, especially on weekends, is ideal for catching up on cleaning and sorting things in your home. Hmmm.
- More time for cooking experiments! With my husband at home, we take shifts to prepare food, or we help each other in the kitchen. This morning my MasterChef indulges in an online recipe of homemade bread rolls using baking soda (still no yeast, but you don’t need it for this recipe). For brunch, we serve the fresh soft buns with butter and cheese, a filling meal on its own. It’s my turn to make a tuna rice salad for dinner.
- Carry on as usual but do take a break! It’s hard not to feel trapped without a choice in isolation. Quarantine is like that. When the sun shines, it reminds you that you can’t go beyond your balcony, patio or garden. When it rains, it seems to enforce the stay-at-home rules even further, like adding fuel to the fire. Today it’s cloudy and windy, and the rain is threatening to arrive at any moment. There’s no other choice but be indoors and carry on with our work until the afternoon. TGIF!
- Cultivate good habits and save money! Since being in lockdown, we have limited ways to spend our disposable income, which means more long-term savings for families. Today, one week into this lockdown madness, I look over the budget and our spending habits for the past month, March. The gross of our money went to necessities, medicine and food in preparation for this lockdown. I’ve also spent my fair share of money on hobbies, books and magazines to keep me busy reading. Even so, we are saving a lot of money simply being indoors. Make it a habit to curb down some of your non-essential expenses, and enjoy more financial freedom (at least that kind of freedom if nothing else).
- Focus on the things that matter the most. Quarantine makes us think twice about the things that matter to each of us. Our minds are strictly attuned to survival and physical and mental well-being. Some of us have to look beyond the everyday luxuries, shopping and travel, and appreciate what we already have – a healthy family, a roof over our heads, water and food in our bellies, a job we can do remotely. Look inward to what makes you happy and do that. It can be more time for yourself, for your loved ones, for a new hobby. It’s about time we take care more of ourselves and be less worried about what happens ‘out there.’ This thou shall pass. Stay safe!
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