While we are doing our part to slow the spread of COVID-19 and protect the vulnerable by staying home, as human beings, staying active physically and socially is our unbreakable lifeline.

Social distancing can make you feel isolated and depressed. Staying home doesn’t mean you have to stay glued to the tv waiting for the top of the hour update of the total cases and deaths of global citizens or where the next hot spot is in the world.

Staying at home can present a new career and hobby opportunity that you didn’t realize due to daily routines commuting back and forth from home to work, working long hours, and family obligations.

Here are five fun things and activities to do when you’re bored at home during self-isolation.

5 Rewarding At Home Activities

1. Start a Side Hustle Business

You’ve heard about shortages of surgical masks for healthcare workers. If you’re good with a sewing machine, have unused fabric, and elastic lying around collecting dust, you may be surprised that at times of crisis is when innovation creativity is born courtesy of small businesses.

If you have thought about running a side hustle while still working at your day job, starting a side hustle business online store selling homemade items can be up in running in a matter of hours.

Making and selling washable cloth face masks on Etsy is a great side hustle and a way to help reduce anxiety levels and give people a small piece of mind when individuals step outside of their homes to buy groceries, attend medical appointments, pick up prescription medications, or to wear when sick or around sick people.

Click on the link for the CDC compliant design instructions on sewing a mask.

Start a Blog

If you have an interest in cooking, traveling, health and wellness, or photography, why not share your tips and ideas with others by starting a weekly or monthly blog?

Starting a blog isn’t time consuming or expensive. Taking a beginner blogging or social media course online for Pinterest saves time, spending hours online reading multiple blogs, and watching YouTube tutorials.

Learn how to build an eye-catching website and ways to leverage your current social media accounts, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest to generate interest and increase traffic to your blog.

Check out my post, Are Blogging Courses Worth Your Time and Money?

2. Make Homemade Cleaning Products

Let’s get real. Store shelves are running bare due to hoarding and uncertainty.

Who knows when stores will be able to restock the shelves 100%. One of the items flying off the shelves? Household cleaning products, many of which are toxic.

Save a trip to the store by using products in your kitchen, baking soda, Dr. Bronner’s castile soap, white distilled vinegar, isopropyl alcohol, and essential oils.

In less than five minutes you can have a bottle of soft scrub, all-purpose cleaner, and disinfecting wipes.

Check out my two-part post, GIY House Cleaning Secrets on the benefits of going green and five recipes you can make today.

3. Reduce Stress & Rebalance the Body

Got any physical ailments like shoulder, neck, and back pain nagging at you? Relive pain, boost energy, and improve sleep in less than 15 minutes a day through Classical Stretch by Essentrics using tai chi, ballet, and physiotherapy techniques to strengthen and stretch the whole body to live pain-free.

Below is one of my favorite mini stretch workouts I do at the end of the day after staring at a computer all day. Give the exercise the 15-minute workout a try.

4. Master Basic Cooking Skills

Do you have aspirations of becoming a better cook, but haven’t had the time to dive into the many cookbooks you’ve collected over the years?

While ordering takeout saves time spent in the kitchen, you don’t know how long the stay at home order is going to last.

Making homemade meals is one way to be creative and spend time bonding with family members in the kitchen.

I recently learned how to make Martha Stewart’s simple hollandaise sauce in less than two minutes using a blender.

To think it took hours to make. Asparagus will never be eaten without this velvety sauce drizzled on top. What took me so long to learn?

One of the benefits of living in the digital age is being able to order groceries online, have them delivered to your front door, avoiding fistfights over eggs and toilet paper.

A lot of well-known chefs like Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsey, and Emerald Lagasse have YouTube channels sharing with us busy folks delicious 15-30 minute meals simplified.

Check out this quick beef stroganoff recipe.

5. Laugh & Dance Away the Anxiety

While COVID 19 has a fatality rate of 1%, stress is a bigger killer.

The pandemic won’t last forever. The coronavirus will return to the place it came from wherever it came from, hibernate under a rock until the next outbreak or pandemic.

Give yourself permission to take a few minutes out of your day to get geeked out on YouTube parodies about the virus-like My Carona, Do Rei Mi – COVID19 Version, and my favorite Virus Baby, an eyebrow dancing parody version of Ice, Ice, Baby by Vanilla Ice, or Randy Rainbow.

Are you missing your friends? Resist the temptation to have an epic in-person mass gathering.

See your friends online instead of engaging in some group therapy with a weekly dance party on YouTube.

Group chats make you feel less alone, allowing you to connect with people around the world sharing in the love of music.

Remember, dancing your bum is a form of exercise.

Below are my favorite 24/7 live electronic dance music (EDM) channels:

• Deep House 24/7

• Group Therapy with Above and Beyond

• The Good Life Radio 

• Chill Your Mind Radio

• Anjunadeep Radio