Stuck at Home in the National Lockdown and Getting Bored? Check out These Interesting Activities You Can Do at Home and Have a Great Time in 2020

Spending time outside your home often requires you to spend money for one thing or the other; however, going for a walk in the park, cycling, or even watching two lovers sitting on the bench together are precious moments that cost nothing. On a serious note, have you ever pondered how much you could save by simply staying at home and indulging yourself in productive habits? You could simply do that by cutting out on the costs by finding alternatives to your normal expenditures. Eating at a restaurant or having a glass of wine is not cheap nowadays; however, if you are willing to spend your time and effort on finding an affordable as well as a somewhat satisfactory place, you may be able to find amazing delicacies online.

If you are stuck at home, you will learn to enjoy even the smallest joys of life immensely. How? Just try and slow down, and you will begin to savour every little moment of life. In this way, even the smallest acts will make you happy, you will be able to appreciate your life more and will not take it for granted anymore. For instance, if you take out your dog for a walk even to kill time, you’ll realise how gracious those little moments are when he runs towards you quickly or gets excited at merely sensing your presence.

Another huge benefit of staying at home is that you will be able to build better family relationships by spending more time with your loved ones. How? If you stay at home more, you will effectively be able to improve your relationships by sitting and talking with them about their goals, wishes and concerns. You’ll be hearing about their perspective on different subjects. This way you’ll be able to appreciate their feelings and make them feel that their views are valued. You may even be astonished by what you find. Try to have more meals together as this has proven to be an excellent way to solve family conflicts. After all, a family that eats together stays together!

Try to communicate with your friends. Reunite with your friends and build those old bonds again. Make them feel loved and comfortable. Text them, call them, FaceTime them, add them in your social media accounts, and renew your friendship. Staying at home is your perfect opportunity to reconnect with your old friends! Here’s how to do this. Keep it simple. If you have not heard from any of your friends in a while, reach out to them. Listen to them, to their problems, and try to empathize with them. Once you reconnect with them, you can begin by talking to them about the memories you have had with them. You may even invite them for dinner or a virtual dinner, in these times of social distancing. In these dinner gatherings, you can talk about your past experiences. You can even share your plans with them. Asking for their help to solve your problems is another tip to establish bonds.

Reconnecting with your old friends has many benefits as well. For instance, it will make you feel more joyful, hence, boosting your morale. You will also feel less lonely and stressed, which will help you to improve your mental health. This will have an overall positive effect on your life.

The next activity on our list is a very healthy one – to read new books. Of course, if you are going to spend a lot of time at home, reading a book that you have always wanted to read is an excellent idea. This is a perfect opportunity to get on your study table, light a lamp, get cosy and start reading right away! Make yourself a cup of tea or coffee; it is always good to have refreshments when you're reading. Lighting candles will bring out a whole new environment. However, if you are going to light some candles, make sure that you handle them properly and that you are watching them and do not forget to extinguish the flames. This should hopefully be a splendid time.

Reading a new book is an excellent way to live a whole new life by visualizing yourself in it. You’ll not only be increasing your creativity but also learning about other perspectives. In this way, your horizons will broaden even before you know it. We’ve enlisted a few suggestions of the classic books that have always been in trend. These are:

You have probably heard all the reasons why some people do not learn a new language; many of these are based on nothing but long-held myths and misapprehensions that it's harder to learn as we get older. In all honesty, our modern world is increasingly interlinked and interdependent; for this reason, expertise in languages other than your native language is a crucial skill that gives you the opportunity to engage with the world in a much more intimate and useful way. Regardless of whether you’re trying to connect with your neighbours or people thousands of miles away, learning a new language enables you to participate and ultimately succeed in the contemporary world.

One of the most excellent features of human experiences is your ability to connect with others. Being able to connect with someone in their native language is an excellent gift. Bilinguals have an incredibly distinct opportunity to connect with a much broader spectrum of people in their personal and professional lives, as compared to others. A new language will allow you to travel to places without having to worry about language barriers. Here’s a list of the top 5 free apps that will help you to learn new languages:

The advantages of brain games are more than you can count. If you’re an adult, you probably relish a good crossword, a card game, or even the latest video games. You probably enjoy the mental boost that you get with each passing level. However, why play brain games? Brain games aid in enhancing brain skills and maintain overall brain health. While these games certainly give a high to your brain, they also sharpen your thinking skills over time. Skills such as processing speed, planning skills, conflict resolution and decision-making fade with time. However, these stimulating brain games allow you to maintain these skills even as you age. They not only develop your skills but also assist in improving your mental health by making you feel happy.

Therefore, we recommend that you do not waste another minute of your vacation, and opt for brain games right away. There are a few suggestions. Play Sudoku! It’s a popular game that you can either play online, on apps or even in your newspaper. Lumosity is another exceptional app. It gives you the most advanced brain training exercises for your optimal mental fitness. Crosswords are another classic brain trainers that not only allow you to polish your vocabulary but also improve many facets of your memory.

If there is one exercise that has the power to alter your life for sure, it’s consciously thinking of the gratitude we owe. When we take out the time from our routine to concentrate on all the positive things in our lives, whether it’s the special people in our lives or our most prized belongings, we become both happier and more positive. It’s an ironclad rule that if you’re living positively and radiating happiness, you encourage the people around you to do the same. Positivity is contagious!

Gratitude blocks all negative emotions, here’s how. All of us start experiencing negative emotions from an early age; whether it’s anger, annoyance, fear, anxiety, sadness, guilt, apathy or depression, we let these emotions consume a large part of our mind as well as time. One of the many benefits of gratitude is how it allows us to block all of these negative as well as toxic feelings. You simply can’t feel angry and grateful at the same time. Therefore, embracing this habit will significantly improve your life. Here’s an interesting exercise for you. Think about someone who has had a positive impact on your life and spend a few minutes to write a letter to this individual. You can write as many letters as you want. Drawing cute pictures on these letters will spice things up!

Just because you are at home, does not mean that you cannot take good care of your health. Get your blood circulating and your endorphins going, by working out at home. All that you require is a yoga mat or you can just use the floor mat you like and get your blood flowing. Stretch out before you go for the workout. You can discover workouts online and find the ones that you would enjoy. Getting your body moving boosts your energy, passes the time, and also makes you feel better. Do not forget to take good care of your health when you are stuck at home. Do not push yourself too hard, and just try to have a good time doing it. It will not only help you stay fit but also help you become stronger.

By working harder on every workout and staying concentrated on the goal, you build persistence and realise the importance of patience, and in the end, learn that hard work always pays off. This is applicable to all aspects in life – going out of your way to achieve something demands dedication and perseverance for a long period of time. By practising persistence on a daily basis in your exercise routine, you learn to apply these to other important aspects of your life as well. Here are a few apps that will assist you in working out:

If you are going to stay in your home for an extended period of time, be sure that the place you are living in is neat and tidy so that you yourself feel clean and tidy. Doing small things like picking up trash and tidying up your area assists in getting you moving while also doing work to make your life a little bit better. Having an uncluttered environment also helps you to breathe and function. Here are a few ideas you can use for cleaning your house – vacuum/swab, do your laundry, sort out cabinets and cupboards, spray some pleasant air freshener around, open your windows if you can, just make the ambience more cosy and liveable.

Play some energetic music as well while you are cleaning. You could play music from Spotify or physical CDs out loud to create a mood, but earphones work well too. Cleaning is something that many people do regularly, and it should be a part of your normal routine as well because the environment you are in has a significant impact on how you feel. So if you have the means and time, we recommend cleaning your space. Whether you go big or small, an effort is still an effort.

Another great thing you can do to pass your time when you are stuck at home is to cook a new recipe. Go and explore your pantry and cook stuff with what you have got in there. Along with cooking, you may also want to give baking a try. Spending time in the kitchen is also a great way to pass your time and you also get to feed yourself in the process. You could try new recipes or stick to the old ones; it all depends on your personal preference. The task is just to put on an apron, and let the Master Chef begin! Your dishes can be as diverse as possible. For example, Korean spinach soup and rice is a very classy and easy dinner recipe that you can try out. You can also have it with kimchi. Pasta is also a classic food to prepare. Just make sure to feed and treat yourself well. These vacations are all about caring for yourself and putting your health above all.

BBC Good Food is a free app for you to try out new recipes. It provides a splendid database of more than 10,000 recipes. Tasty is another free app that provides step by step instructions for you to cook exotic delicacies. With more than 350,000 recipes, BigOven has won the hearts of many chiefs. We recommend you download it immediately!

Gardening burns calories. This is as true as it gets. In fact, light gardening can burn up to 330 calories an hour. However, since it is a physical activity we recommend you increase your workload slowly so as to avoid aches and pains. Numerous studies have highlighted the benefits of gardening. It simply increases the happiness, fun and energy of an individual. Studies also found an interesting fact: students who wouldn’t eat vegetables were more inclined towards vegetables after gardening them. When you cater for a plant for such a long time, you realise the effort that goes into their simple growth. You begin to value them. And since gardening is a physical activity, it enhances your physical as well as mental health. It inculcates the idea of persistence and its significance. You can apply the principles that you learn during your gardening sessions on other areas of life as well.

Apart from the physical and mental advantages, gardening provides an excellent opportunity for you and your family to bond. Families that participate in gardening activities feel more united and bonded. Studies have found that working together for hours to achieve something as simple yet as productive as nurturing a plant is literally fruitful!

Our next activity is pretty simple – adopt a new hobby! Or get back to an old hobby of yours that you did not have time to work on before. Take this time to treat yourself and do something that you love to do. In life, you should make time for the things that make you happy. This could be painting, drawing, knitting, playing an instrument, playing video games, watching movies and TV series, simply anything your heart desires. Here are a few ideas for the hobby that you can adopt:

If you are a work enthusiast, you can always make your work into a hobby. If you’re a writer, start writing new stories! You do not need to fall behind. Catch up on the stuff you need to get done in the comfort of your home. Remember to take breaks and keep snacks along with you. You could try out apples, bananas or nuts. Also, have a source of hydration with you. It's essential to stay hydrated and well-nourished.

RescueTime tracks the amount of time that you spend on different websites or apps. You can download this app on your computer or mobile phone and make it run in the background. This is extremely helpful if you believe that you waste a lot of time on Facebook or any other social media apps, and want to control your habit.

The premium version of this app will cost you just US$ 9.00 (about ₹ 700.00) per month and can help you alter your life completely. It will allow you to track the amount of time that you spend away from your devices, on your devices as well as enable you to block various distraction-causing sites after a specified time, hence, ensuring that you manage your time productively. This is available for Android, Windows as well as Apple devices.

Toggl is a free app that is the perfect solution to all your time-management issues. You can tag your entries to projects or groups or manage numerous people at the same time. It also enables you to develop custom reports that are visually appealing. One of the bonus points of this splendid app is that the desktop version makes the time tracking virtually automatic. You don’t have to put in an effort to feed in the time data. Toggl is free for up to five users; this means it is a very cost-effective app for freelancers.

This app keeps detailed updates of all your activities and provides in-depth progress reports for all your projects. You can set up the app to take screenshots at regular intervals that you could include in an activity report to your clients. Without doubt, this is one of the most inclusive tracking and structural tools for freelancers. You have the option to access every aspect for as many users and projects as necessary, for free.