61 Things to do During Lockdown

1. Do all of the chores that you usually put off! (Go on, you know you want to.)

2. Make a list of films you’ve been wanting to watch and make your way through them

3. Do the same for books!

4. TV shows, too. If you’re having trouble deciding which one to pick first, put the titles in a jar and take them out one by one.

5. Bake. (Just make sure you get all of the ingredients in your weekly shop!)

6. Cook your favourite recipes

7. Learn new recipes. Missing your favourite restaurant or takeaway? See if you can learn how to make your fave meals of theirs from home!

8. Learn a new language. Give Duolingo a try!

9. Make playlists. A lockdown playlist, a spring/summer playlist, a throwback playlist, a cheer-up playlist… (You can find my own cheer-up playlist here.)

10. Invite the other members of your household to a movie marathon with snacks. Or just do it solo! (Just be careful not to eat all of your quarantine snacks in one go!)

11. Got a garden? Eat outside!

12. Better yet, have a barbecue!

13. Have a picnic in your garden or living room

14. Host a D.I.Y afternoon tea

15. Build a fort

16. Make some post-pandemic travel plans! With pubs, clubs and clothes shops shut, now is the perfect time to start saving up all of those pennies that you'd usually be spending!

17. Have virtual get-togethers. Gather your friends on Zoom or Discord for a virtual movie-night, pub quiz, some party games, or just a catch-up! 18. Check in on your friends. Make sure that they're coping okay and try to cheer them up if they're not.

19. Reach out to a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while. They’ll probably be glad you did!

20. Binge-watch your favourite series

21. Start a scrapbook

22. Clean

23. Clear out your wardrobe and/or makeup

24. Reorganise your wardrobe

25. Reorganise a room

26. Make time for a hobby

27. Find a new hobby

28. Experiment with your hair or makeup. Maybe you’ll find a new favourite look? (Don’t forget to post a selfie of the finished result!)

29. Craft. You can find heaps of crafting inspiration on Pinterest!

30. Colour. If you don’t have a colouring book, find some colouring sheets online and print them off.

31. Workout from home! There’s plenty of workout videos on YouTube, and a tonne of fitness Instagram accounts.

32. Same goes for yoga and Pilates!

33. Meditate. You’ll be able to find lots of guided meditations on your app store or on YouTube.

34. Play or cuddle with a pet

35. Play video or computer games. (Animal Crossing is currently my game of choice.)

36. Play a board game

37. Complete a jigsaw puzzle

38. Organise the files on your laptop

39. Clear out your photo gallery on your phone. (If you’re anything like me, it’ll be overflowing with out-of-date memes!)

40. Pamper yourself. Facemasks, baths, painting your nails… Do whatever makes you feel good!

41. Do an online course. I’ve previously completed free courses on FutureLearn, but a quick Google search will show you that there’s so many to choose from!

42. Set your browser homepage to Wikipedia’s ‘random’ page. Every time you open it, you can learn something new! (Suggested by Lilly.)

43. Write a diary

44. Keep a daily gratitude list. Spend some time focussing on the positives.

45. Make a vision board. Check out Pinterest for inspo.

46. Learn a TikTok dance

47. Start a TikTok. Have you been able to resist so far?

48. Start a YouTube

49. Start a blog! Come join the club.

50. Meal prep

51. Phone a loved one

52. Join or start a virtual book club

53. Pick some flowers and try your hand at flower-pressing

54. Volunteer to help in your local area. You can volunteer to support the NHS here.

55. Find things around the house to donate when charity shops re-open. Charity fundraising is suffering massively due to the pandemic.

56. Not currently travelling to work? Donate the price of your work commute or morning coffee to a charity of your choice each day.

57. Come up with a list of coping strategies to turn to if you’re mentally struggling. (There’s an endless amount of brilliant ideas here.)

58. Google feel-good stories and good news

59. Make a list of things to look forward to when this is over. Hold onto those things any time you’re finding lockdown tough.

60. Plan a "Freedom Party"

61. And last but not least: Write your own list of things to do in lockdown!

How many things on this list have you already ticked off? Do you have any ideas to add?

Stay safe and stay sane, everyone!

Love,

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How to Work from Home

Not even Vogue’s Anna Wintour could have predicted that the hot trends for Spring 2020 would have been florals, medical masks, and working from home. The coronavirus pandemic has seen a huge chunk of the country making the sudden switch to homeworking to slow the disease’s spread – and I know for many, this is a huge change. As someone who’s had her fair share of experience in this area, I thought I’d share a few of my top tips on how to manage yourself and keep productive at home:

How to Cope During Lockdown

As I’m writing this, we’re currently on Day 1 of lockdown in the UK. (That’s definitely not a sentence that I ever expected to type in my lifetime!)

While I fully support the lockdown, a lot of people are concerned about the mental impact that staying isolated at home is going to have. And I completely understand.

In fact, I’ve been here before.

After my back operation, I spent a week alone in hospital, followed by a further six weeks stuck at home. Over the next nine months I barely left the house, and I only saw my friends six times in total. It was the loneliest experience of my life – and I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t take a huge toll on my mental health.

But there are bright sides this time around. I’m able to do a lot more, so there’s lots of ways that I can keep busy and entertain myself that I just couldn’t do back then. And this time, I’m not doing it alone. None of us are doing this alone.

My heart truly does hurt for anybody mentally struggling right now, but I just want to promise you that you can get through this, and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. (I’m proof of that!)

But, while we’re stuck in the tunnel, I wanted to share a few tips on how we can all get through this together:

Sex Education's Aimee Represents All of Us

Like anybody with good taste in Netflix shows, I spent this month counting down to the release of Sex Education Season 2, and proceeded to binge-watch the entire thing in one day once it dropped. It was funny, it was joyful, it was relatable, and it was heart-warming – but (spoiler warning) there’s one storyline that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind since.

Witnessing or Experiencing Sexual Assault: What You Can Do

In Season 2 of Sex Education, we see Aimee Gibbs trying to recover from the trauma of a sexual assault that she experienced on the bus to school one morning. It’s an issue that’s all too common, and yet it’s not spoken about nearly enough. So, to tie in with my blog post bout Aimee’s story, this post will cover what you can do if you are a victim or witness of either sexual harassment, or sexual assault.

What Recovery Means to Me

Last month, I wrote a series of blog posts covering some of my experiences with mental illness. They mostly focussed on my experience as a teenager, because that’s when my mental health was at its worst. But that’s not to say that I don’t still struggle.

The struggle is different now, though. Now, I’m trying to fight my mental illnesses, whereas before, I was defeated by them. And while I know that I’ll never completely beat them, there are still little victories, small wins, and that's enough. We're able to co-exist.

A friend of mine who recently blogged about her OCD mentioned how “recovery is a journey, not a destination”. And she’s so right. 

It’s not necessarily about needing a cure; it’s about having the tools you need to be able to cope. It’s about having your illness be a part of you, like your hair or your eye colour – not something that completely defines you. It’s about accepting that there are bad days and bad moments, but recognising that they’re going to pass. 

I have anxiety, but now I see that I’m more than that. It’s a part of my life, but my world is so much more than that.

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My Visit to the Denbigh Asylum

I write a lot about my life on this little blog... the good, the bad and the ugly. But something I’ve never written about is the scary. So, for Halloween, I thought I’d post something a bit different. I’m going to tell you about the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me. 

Whether you choose to believe it or not is up to you. The dialogue might not always be 100% accurate, and little details here and there might be jumbled… but all of these events actually happened. Not too long ago, in fact.

Wedding OOTD

Your early 20s are weird, aren’t they? Some of your friends are settling down and starting families while some can’t even keep a houseplant alive, let alone a relationship or a baby. I admit that I fall into the latter category – but last weekend, I had the pleasure of watching one of my infinitely-more-responsible high school besties getting married, and I may or may not have shed a tear or two. (Or maybe even a few hundred.)

Dress - £31.50 • Jacket - £17.99 • Shoes - sold out • Clutch - sold out • Fascinator - sold out