Tips for Working from Home & Staying Sane in Lockdown

I thought I’d love the working from home life but it’s not quite the way I planned with my husband also having to work from home plus a two year old to look after! A few days in, here are my top tips for working from home, staying sane and being as productive as possible!

1. Routine

Laying out a rough routine has really helped. We’ve agreed to work in shift patterns so one of us looks after Theo in the morning while the other works, we both work while he’s asleep at lunchtime and then swap over in the afternoon. 

We’ve also drawn up a plan for the day with Theo just to try and keep him occupied. 

7-8am: Breakfast and screen time

8-9am: Play with toys

9-10am: Educational activity (numbers/colours/letters/shapes etc. This could be reading or jigsaws or playing with the shape sorter, playing a counting game etc)

10-11am: Garden play

11-12pm: Lunch and screen time

12-2pm: Naptime

2-3pm: Quiet time (he’s always a bit cranky and upset after a nap so needs a cuddle and we’ll watch TV or read)

3-4pm: Craft activity (drawing/painting/baking/play dough etc)4-5pm Garden play

5-6pm: Dinnertime

6-7pm: Play with toys and wind down

7pm: Bedtime  

The most important thing to remember though is that the routine is to help you, it’s not necessary to rigidly stick to it. It’s good to bear in mind the kind of things you’d like to fit into a day but if it doesn’t work out that way, it’s absolutely fine and don’t put too much pressure on it. You can adapt it as you go along to what works for you.

2. Meal Plan

It’s more important than ever to only buy what we need and don’t let anything go to waste. By meal planning I find it so much easier to make sure that we all eat healthily and I don’t have to come up with ideas on the fly. 

For the family meal planning templates that I use you can visit my Meal Planning blog post – it also includes shopping list and recipe card templates too!

3. Self Care

I was going to call this section exercise (which really can do wonders for mental health because it creates happy hormones in our brains) but really, taking any sort of time out of the day to do something that we enjoy, that is just for ourself, has a similar effect. It can be really easy at home to forget to take a break, in the same way we’re encouraged to step away from our computers in the office, it’s equally as important at home! 

I’ve been really surprised how intense being at home has been, I seem to have less time to myself than ever before! I’ve bought myself a weighted hula hoop because I want to get in a bit better shape and even spending 5 minutes in the garden with some happy music playing and hula hooping really does make me feel a lot less stressed and claustrophic. 

I bought the hula hoop off Amazon for £20.

4. Try New Things

Being stuck in the house all the time is going to get old really, really quickly. Finding little things to make each day a bit different can be great to break up the boredom. For me, each day I’m trying out different eyeshadow looks from my Beauty Bay Evolve palette. As a working mum, I never just have the time to play with different make up looks. When I’m doing my make up it’s because I’m leaving the house and someone is going to see me so I stick to looks that I’m comfortable with. Now I’m inside, I can try out big, bright bold looks without feeling self conscious! 

Other ideas to try: new hair styles or hair colours, outfits, dances or exercise tutorials, recipes, new books or films, sex positions –  try anything! 😉

5. Stay in Touch

I really hate talking on the phone and even video chatting (odd as I film YouTube videos I know) but keeping connections outside of the home is so important. Make sure to schedule catch ups with your colleagues. It’s so easy for relationships to become strained from a distance and emails just make this worse. Make sure you’re checking in with people in person.

Also, in your downtime, stay in touch with friends and family. Particularly people who may live on their own. The House Party app is a great way to do this, you can have video calls and play games and stuff. Some ideas for video chatting:

• Share a meal – arrange to have dinner at the same time and have a chat.
• Pub quiz – nominate a quiz master and get a group together
• Watch your favourite TV programs at the same time and talk about them
• Group exercise class – get your friends together and do a virtual yoga class!
• Play dates – ring other mums so that the kids can interact with each other over video. I think I’m most worried about the effect on Theo of not going to nursery and seeing other children for so long so this is a great way to try and help develop his social skills!

I hope there’s some inspo in here that you can use while we’re all operating under confinement. It’s going to be a while yet so I’d love to hear your tips for working from home, for keeping calm and enjoying our time at home!

Follow me on Instagram for more tips and to see what I’m getting up to on a daily basis – https:/www.instagram.com/ohhidiy

Take care and stay kind xx