CREATIVE SELF-CARE | QUARANTINE | WELLNESS

Some of my favorite self-care activities involve taking a stroll through a botanical garden, wandering through bookstores, working from my favorite local coffee shop or cooking dinner with my bestie over a bottle of wine (cause friendship is self-care, too!).

We’re in the midst of a new reality with COVID-19 where all non-essential businesses are closed and gathering with friends is off the table. So, in this post, I’m going to share 7 self-care practices you can enjoy safely, while in quarantine.

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7 Creative Ways to Practice Self Care During Quarantine

1. Plan a menu for the week

I fell in love with menu-planning during my time as a nanny. I was responsible for feeding a family of 4 each week and doing all the grocery shopping. Planning a menu ahead of time made the rest of the week go smoothly, and created less food waste.

During self-isolation, you may find that you’re cooking more while attempting to shop less. Enter meal-planning!

Grab a couple of your favorite cookbooks and a glass of wine or a cup of tea. Put on a relaxing playlist and nourish yourself by planning a menu for your week. 

You might not consider menu-planning an act of self-care, but give it a try and you’ll see that it is. 

Knowing what you’re going to cook will bring you a sense of calm. 

• Having a shopping list paired with your menu will help ease anxiety while at the market because you’ll know exactly what to purchase. 
• You can have a plan for leftovers and can freeze extras for lazy days, giving you more time to spend doing things you love.
• My free menu-planner has a few ideas for you. Scroll up and grab it!

Here are a few of my favorite cookbooks to get you started:

Click images below for Amazon pricing

 

2. Take a bath (during the day)

Taking a bath is nothing new when it comes to self-care suggestions, but let’s get creative by taking a bath during the day instead of in the evening.

You can still light candles and use your favorite bath salts, but the natural light will be much easier for reading if you want to catch up on a novel or read a magazine. 

One of my favorite creative self-care activities is having a “breakfast bath.” I make a bowl of oatmeal, brew some coffee, and add a bath into my morning routine.

Taking a bath in the morning feels very luxurious, like something you only let yourself do while staying at a hotel.

If you’re working from home, you can even schedule a bath into your lunch break! I won’t tell. 😉

Here are a few of my favorite bathtub things:

Click images below for Amazon pricing

3. Make a vision board

 You’re spending a lot more time looking around at your walls- why not use them as a manifestation tool? 

Making a vision board has a couple of layers of creative self-care to it:

Flipping through pages of a magazine or browsing Pinterest while looking for things you desire is an act of self-care in itself.

By placing your vision board somewhere that you’ll see often. Your subconscious mind will start to get the hint that these are the things you want in your life, and the Universe will get busy to bring them to you when you align. (I know that was a little woo, but trust me- it works!)

4. Create a 10-minute morning routine

A morning routine is a self-care practice that can transform our entire day. While sunrise yoga followed by contemplative journaling and a 30-minute meditation sounds great, a simple morning routine is much easier to stick to.

Instead, create a 10-minute morning routine and build from there if you please.

If you want a few tips, check out my blog post: How to Create a 10-minute Morning Routine.

5. Plant something and watch it grow

Plant-care is self-care. Whether you’ve already got houseplants at home, or you want to use this time to turn your black thumb green, planting something and watching it grow is a beautiful self-care activity that you can enjoy at home.

Take houseplants you already have and create new ones by starting clippings. You can find advice on how to do that in my post, How to Style Pothos Clippings.

If you’re ready to step up your plant-care game now that you have more time at home, follow these 12 Tips for Happy Houseplants.

Grab a pot, soil, order a few seeds online, and start an outdoor herb garden in your yard or patio. If you don’t have an outdoor space, a sunny windowsill will do just fine.

For tips about gardening, I love the Black Girls With Gardens Blog.

Having healthy houseplants around you also nourishes your mental wellness and will instantly energize your home decor.

If you don’t have any plants and want to order some online, you can order my favorite easy-care houseplant on Amazon by clicking the image below. Learn more about the Pothos plant in my post, The Only Houseplant You’ll Ever Need.

Click image below for Amazon pricing

6. Take an online class

Learning something new is kind of like dating yourself. You get to know new things about yourself as you develop new skills. With outings being limited during this time, a great weekend (or weekday if you have extra time!) activity is to enroll in an online class.

The best part? There are tons of online classes you take right now, about any subject, for free!

Check out skillshare for 2 months FREE of all-access premium courses. Find your next course here.

7. Practice gratitude

Infusing gratitude into your self-care practice is more needed than ever. We’ve all heard the advice about having a gratitude journal, and that’s a great option. But, if keeping a journal sounds like another task on your to-do list, consider using your time in quarantine to talk out loud to yourself. There’s nobody around to worry about overhearing you!

Start by waking with gratitude. Before you step out of bed, say “thank you,” a few times. Then, throughout the day, play a game to see how many times you can say thank you out loud to yourself.

Take that first sip of coffee? “Thank you.”

Open the fridge and see food inside? “Thank you.”

It turns out cultivating gratitude is as easy as talking to yourself, and it’s a simple way to practice self-care.

I hope that someday soon we’ll be able to return to solo adventures at museums and be able to treat ourselves to a massage, but until then, embrace these creative self-care practices and stay safe at home.

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