We all are busy working from home or studying from home life. But apart from that, we do get a lot of extra time that goes unutilized. There are many household works that we could do to enjoy our life at home and enrich our amateur skills. Let us go through some jobs that can keep us occupied in a dull lockdown period.
1)Cooking : Cooking comes in the number 1 spot. Cooking is a passion for many of us, while it is a very laborious task for others. It is nice to try your hand at cooking this lockdown. It is not that you have to cook restaurant quality and Masterchef dishes. You may lend a helping hand to those cooking food daily at your home. You may also try making some new drinks or simple desserts, or you may decorate and garnish a particular dish item. Try your hand at chopping, grinding and baking. Most recipes are found on the internet and youtube, so you don’t need a high degree of knowledge or skill to start cooking. Start with basics like brewing tea, frying omelette, or kneading dough.
2)Room Decoration : This may seem unnecessary when no guests are coming to your home, but for people, who like their home tip-top, this is one thing they would like to do all day. Decorating a home doesn’t mean you need to buy furniture or make curtains. Keeping our house clean is also a form of decorating our home. Mopping the floor, sweeping the floor and walls with a broom, destroying the spider webs in ceiling corners or human hair underneath a bed, and even making your bed is a form of cleaning the home. Anytime you can experiment with certain adjustments in your room like moving the furniture to different places, put a separate sheet over the sofa, or rearranging your dressing table. Start with wiping wall clocks, or changing room carpets or dust the tablecloth in your room, it will take away a lot more time than you think.
3)Light Exercise and Yoga : For those who are not a fan of exercising daily, the lockdown period is an excellent time to bring it to a new hobby. It is not that you have to build muscles or lose weight. Start with light exercises and yoga that are taught at school. Exercise rejuvenates your mind, makes you concentrate harder on your work, and helps you stay fit and active at the same time. Start with breathing exercises, brisk walking, surya namaskar, and you are good to go.
4)Sun-Drying Unused Clothes : Clothes that are not regularly worn are likely to harbour moisture and fungus and smell damp. It is an age-old practice in India to turn cupboards out and leave everything on the balcony or roof to dry in the sun. Take them out in small batches, and put them in the sunlight. It is summer now, and the sunlight is likely to kill germs present in the clothes. Small batches will make sure that it is an occupying yet straightforward task. Who knows, you may find a dress that you have always overlooked. If you have a garden, then do a bit of gardening like watering the plants or fertilizing. This will ensure you get Vitamin D from the sun.
5)Knitting and Handicrafts : Do you like weaving? There is a lot of DIY stuff, a short form of doing it yourself, that keeps your mind relaxed at this tense hour. You may learn knitting in lockdown and if you already know it, then make sure to keep the boring evenings occupied by knitting or sewing. Mend pores in old clothes, put up torn buttons, make covers that cover expensive clothes or quilts. If you know to weave, then you can sometimes keep busy knitting a sweater with wool. You may make your cushion with a new piece of cloth. Decorative stuff like coloured bottles, pen stands, wall hanging materials can also be made with minimum requirements. Start with searching youtube for DIY crafts and try to implement the one suitable for you.
Written by – Himadri Paul