With the current coronavirus outbreak, most of us are now staying at home to keep ourselves safe from the virus. A few days in of the 30-day quarantine, we’re still adjusting to this home-based lifestyle and figuring out what to do to keep ourselves busy. After all, we’ll soon grow tired of binging all those shows on Netflix or doing Tiktok dance challenges.
Despite being confined in the close quarters of your home, there are still a lot of things within your reach that you can do to stay productive. Fill up your daily schedule with these 7 free activities that will make you forget you’re quarantining in the first place.
1. Practice a new language
Get into that language course you’ve been putting off because you “don’t have the time”. Now that you’re stuck at home, this is the perfect time to catch up on your goal of language fluency, something that you can carry with you for a lifetime.
2. Stimulate your brain with online courses
School may be suspended, but there are still a lot of opportunities to learn something new in your field. The online course aggregator Class Central has collated more than 400 online classes taught by Ivy League schools on different subjects, from engineering to philosophy. The best thing is, they’re absolutely free!
Aside from Class Central, Coursera and edX are also great platforms to audit classes and build your skill sets with free online classes.
3. Start a reading spree with Scribd
Now you will never run out of things to read, thanks to Scribd’s way of helping us quarantine homebodies pass the time. For 30 days, you can get access to Scribd’s digital archive of e-books, audiobooks, magazines, and much more – all for free, no strings attached.
Whether you’re in the mood for science fiction or an inspirational read, Scribd has got you covered with this great initiative. What better way to spend our off days (30 of them) with a cup of tea on one hand and an e-book on another?
4. Do a home workout using free exercise apps
Here’s something to make you sweat that isn’t a Tiktok dance craze. Several premium workout apps are now offering their services for free this quarantine season to keep our bodies active even at home. Peloton, an all-around workout app, is extending its trial to be free for 90 days. Through this app, you get interactive guides to strength training, boot camps, and outdoor running classes (but maybe keep the running indoors, for now).
5. Learn a new recipe
Your meals don’t need to be plain canned goods all throughout the quarantine. This is the perfect time to experiment and learn a new recipe with just the ingredients you already have in stock. There are a lot of tutorials on Youtube and cooking websites on how you can make corned beef into a great and different dish every time.
Some celebrity chefs have even shared their own recipes you can do on your own, like a no-frills omelet or vegetable soup. If you do plan on recreating these dishes, just remember to not hoard the ingredients when buying for food supplies at the supermarket.
6. Go on a museum virtual tour
If you’ve been itching to go somewhere that is not the toilet or the kitchen, why not try a virtual tour of popular museums and national parks. While social distancing measures stop you from going to crowded areas, it doesn’t say anything about going there online.
Through their websites, you can go and have a self-guided and room-by-room trip of The Louvre in France or the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. You can even go for a virtual walk of the Great Wall of China, or maybe Yellowstone National Park – complete with sounds.
7. Start a blog
The great thing about having and writing a blog is that it can be about absolutely anything. If you like writing poetry or short stories, a blog can be the perfect trigger to push you to start writing the verses. Your blog could even be about the coronavirus outbreak, your opinions about it, or even your day-to-day dealings with the quarantine. It’s all up to you.
How are you keeping yourself busy during this home quarantine? Share them with us below!