My Daily Things to Do During Covid-19 Lockdown
I am a traveler and a travel blogger. I have been traveling regularly with my husband Rajesh since our marriage in Sep’ 2015. And I, personally, have been travelling for more than a decade now. Welcome, this my blogging platform. Sometimes, I do pen down my non-travel life experiences here, because that is what keeps my life balanced. There is one such experience, where I had to stay home for 4 months without any travel or any kinda outing. Apart from occasionally going out for a walk and shopping, I lived a totally alien life.
Well, not just me, the whole world stayed indoor during the #Covid-19Pandemic.
So keep reading to know my #Covid19LockdownStory.
List of my daily things to do during Covid-19 lockdown
Initially I struggled with the workload, since there was no maiden help during complete lockdown. Naturally, I soon found a way to simplify the tasks and make it fun instead of boring.
So, here is the list of things to do daily that kept us engaged and productive.
1. The Most important things to do Daily – Food
Rajesh took responsibility for sourcing groceries along with all other staples. He took the pain of standing in the queue when the resources were on complete demand.
I took the responsibility of meal planning and preparation.
It used to be hectic as days went by without any maiden help. It was becoming a full time job and I started finding myself suffocating with other things to do in the daily list.
For sure I missed all the eating out in the favorite restaurants nearby. Especially the friday night chinese soup and momos.
Thankfully, Rajesh was very understanding and supporting all those days.
He used to show up and engage in a conversation in Kitchen until my task gets complete. At times he helped me with some tasks too. Soon he showed interest in cooking and even mastered a non-veg dish in just a couple of attempts. I could not be more proud of him. Here is why.
The community I grew up in, was led by matriarchs and they taught all their kids all kinds of chores irrespective of the genders.
So, you might be surprised to see girls riding motorbikes and boys cooking elaborate meals for the family. Until now, my mom’s side grandma was my inspiration. Because she was quite successful in life as a farmer and a homemaker, despite being widow from a very young age.
My father asked me to learn cooking not for running a family or becoming a good homemaker. He insisted on learning cooking just as a survival skill, just like how he insisted on learning swimming, karate, riding bikes and computer classes.
Except that he gave more importance to the education part. Thanks to him, I learnt all survival skills including car driving before the age 18. And more than grateful that I have never been a burden to anybody in my life. Well, that’s the point of calling oneself as “independent” isn’t it?.
Well, now I’m a big fan of my hubby’s pepper chicken fry with ground spices from his own hands.
2. Home making – Rinse and Repeat
Here comes the laborious job of home making. From making bed in the morning to the time I go to bed at night, there were always many things to do. Somehow these tasks never seemed to be a burden when I was regular to office.
Not to mention the extra task of sanitizing the entire house.
Thanks to my habit of bulk-buying the toileteries, I had enough supply to last this year.
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Amidst all these chaos, there was an emotional breakdown from one of the houses on my apartment floor. He was faced with a dispute from all the neighbors as he bought a guest backdoor. Soon, there were more rules and regulations in place. People were then asked to enter the timings at the main entrance security gate and the purpose of the outing.
Though it had nothing to do with us, the conflict in the apartment kinda put us too in a stress mode.
On a positive note, my next door neighbor became a close friend and soon we started sharing food. She became a fan of my South Indian dishes and we became fan of her barbecues.
3. Blogging
Hardly there was any energy left to do my professional work and blogging. My website was put under construction not too long before the lockdown. Since I wanted to give a makeover to the basic wordpress theme I had, I put my website on maintenance mode for sometime. Yet again, thanks to hubby who did all sorts of help to run my website. Infact, my blog doesn’t exist without his support.
I tried my best to keep at the regular office schedule and timelines.
I was very particular about keeping myself cool and not to stress myself on the timelines.
Because I believe that any good habits need to be in moderation to keep the sanity.
4. Beautify the Home Garden
Just like our home and website, the garden underwent some makeover too. I rearranged the pots, cleaned the balcony space and added some nutrition to the soil. When it comes to gardens, Rajesh always stays far away. But he was the one to be super excited when there were summer blossoms all over our garden.
There never was a day went without admiring the flowers during our morning cuppa coffee.
5. Health is Wealth
Soon after our beautiful time together enjoying our morning cup of coffee or tea, comes workout time. Again Rajesh stays far away during this time. He would join sometime in the evening only if had kept nagging him.
Usually I enjoyed my morning workouts with my limited collection of weights. I created a workout chart of my own and ritually stuck to the schedule and the chart. Though I did not follow any diet in particular, I simply ate less on the days I did not workout.
The result?
Felt stronger and toned after 3 months of consistent workouts. I would be joining gym soon after these craziness settles down.
6. Saving the Cute little Bird
Guess who came to make my covid-19 lockdown colourful?.
A tiny, cute red whiskered bulbul bird.
As I mentioned before we have this beautiful garden space of about 200 sq. feet with bushy plants and trees.
We have these cute little frequent visitors who lay eggs on our balcony steel gate. Since we don’t usually open this gate, these adult birds take turns in growing their family on this sturdy gate.
It is not unusual for us to see the nests in our balcony all the time.
On one such day, we were anxiously waiting for these hatchlings to fly away to join their extended family across our balcony. But soon we found those two had fallen on to the ground after a siblings’ fight for space. We kinda anticipated this as their parents built a messy nest and hatchlings were literally hanging on a thread all these days.
One of the siblings was hurt falling hard on its right wing and was in severe shock.
Cutting the long story short, we rescued the baby bird hiding in our garden bushes on that night and brought it inside home.
We nourished the baby strong after we took ‘Raybaby’ for consultation. Raybaby stayed with us for 2 weeks until it was reunited with its parents.
It was the most beautiful and wonderful part in my life.
Myself and Raybaby grew attached to each other. Ray would come hopping on to me wherever I am, only to snuggle under my neck for food and a nap. I treasure those times we went hunting the grasshoppers around the jogging tracks in our apartment.
With a heavy heart I had to let it go with its parents after two failed attempts, to its well deserving wild life.
7. Stop Panic – Practice Mind and Wellness
I started implementing a mind wellness regimen and tried hard to stick to it till date.
As soon as waking up and just before morning coffee I spent no more than 10 mins writing in my journal. I don’t write about anything in particular, but I answer only a couple of questions repeatedly for a week. Then I would go on to answer another set of questions for the next week.
I got inspired from this book when I was looking for a guide to strengthen my brain muscles :).
Writing down the responses in my journal helped me a great deal to focus in my life with clarity.
Now it has become part of my morning routine and it is one of the most important things to do in my daily list.
These were my daily things to do during Covid-19 lockdown, all the while keeping ourselves safe and sane.
Update – The car (Creta 2020) we booked before Covid lockdown got delivered in June 2020. And here is where we went on a long drive from Bangalore.