What to do when in Quarantine?

By Sofia Arts Romero and Manon Goirand

Due to the recent worldwide COVID-19 outbreak, most countries are in lockdown. What do we do now? How do we occupy ourselves? All our movements are restrained for the next few weeks and we are stuck at home; not many things are possible. That is why we decided to help you out by giving you some ideas that could make your days more diverse and less tedious, as well as to create an everyday routine so that this lockdown goes by faster! Here are some ideas:

Board Games

Sick of staying all day long playing video games? Diversify by enjoying board games with your family or friends. Let’s go back to classic games like Monopoly, UNO, or Scrabble for the most competitive of you. If you prefer to play in teams, Pictionary is a good pick. Want to laugh with your friends? Cards against Humanity is the game for that. If your friends are not with you, worry not; an online version is available for free on iOS and Android called Black Humanity or Black cards.

Cooking

You’ll have plenty of time to improve your cooking and baking skills! Apps such as SuperCook, Epicurious will help you finish the food you have in your fridge, avoid waste and give you meal inspirations. They are easy to use, just put what food you have left, and they will offer you recipes to cook with some guidelines. For more apps, go on the Escoffier.

Netflix and Chill

If you have Netflix or any other account, here are some suggestions:

Are you a TV show lover? Then these are our top 5 to watch: ‘Outlander’ will give you a glimpse of Fantasy as well as English and American history. Mix a bit your tastes and add ‘Our planet’, an interesting series of documentaries about nature, animals all around the world, and the effect of climate change on them, described with beautiful images. Finally, ‘Friends’, ‘Big Bang Theory’, and ‘How I met Your Mother’ will make you laugh out loud - trust us! More of a movie fan? Ocean’s 8, Spenser Confidential, or Joker are some examples of entertaining movies! Definitely give them a watch.  

Work out

Being stuck in a closed space for a long time can be very stressful. However, we can’t stress enough the importance of keeping the body moving! Even if it’s 15 minutes a day, working out will help you stay in shape, keep your blood flowing, increase energy levels, reduce stress, increase mental and physical health, and overall distract you during this lockdown! If you can’t leave the house, try a home workout such as @savwright_ @scott_mathison @demibagby on Instagram or Pamela Reif and Fraser Wilson on Youtube. Finally, if you can safely leave the house, make sure to go for a run or a walk and get fresh air once in a while, it’ll help boost your mood!

Meditation

If you find yourself more stressed than usual, make sure you learn to breathe and relax, either through meditation or any other way. Find a quiet and calming space in your house, such as a terrace, sofa or bed. Play some relaxing music or any guided meditation (or neither) and breathe in and out slowly until you find yourself in a calmer situation. There are several apps that can help with this, such as headspace, calm, and many others!

Studying

It is very important that we all acknowledge that there are still ongoing classes. Therefore, everyone should take some time to catch up with lectures, tutorials, homework, and assignments to get that degree!! If this is not enough for you and want more learning opportunities, you can always sign up for inexpensive online courses offered by many universities, such as Harvard, Yale, etc. and covering several topics such as Computer Science, Accounting, Health, etc.

Cleaning

Finally, you can take this time to organize, clean, or rearrange your room however you want! A clean space will help you focus more and feel more productive and clean. So, get some trash bags, and throw away anything you don’t want or need!

Even though these ideas are only a few of the many things you could do at home during this quarantine, there are several others that may also keep you entertained. The only thing you need for that is creativity! We hope this journal was helpful and motivated you to try a couple of ideas out! Remember to stay safe!

24-03-2020