Editor’s note: We originally wrote this article to inspire people to stay creative and productive during winter, but these tips are surprisingly relevant now that many of us have to stay at home to stop the spread of COVID-19. To all of our readers, try to stay healthy the next few months.
Here are some of our best ways to keep busy after binge-watching Netflix is no longer satisfying.
31 Cozy And Productive Activities To Do At Home:
- Learn a new recipe and cook up an amazing breakfast. What if it’s not breakfast time? Well, you’re at home, so why bother following any of the rules?
- Sort through all those papers, old mail and unanswered emails that you’ve been meaning to catch up with. This probably won’t be fun while you’re doing it, but it’ll be so rewarding once you’re finished.
- Start learning a new language! For one, it’s absolutely possible to do without a teacher or a classroom. Secondly, staying at home is the perfect time to use the sticky note method.
- Clean out your closet.
- Sell the clothes you just decluttered on Ebay, Depop, ThreadUP, Vinted or another local reselling platform.
- Start a new indoor workout routine, whether you’re more into circuit training or yoga.
- Watch a movie you’ve never seen before but always wanted to. Doesn’t seem productive enough? Trying using foreign movies to help you learn a new language.
- Are you more of a podcast person? It turns out you can also use podcasts to up your language-learning game as well.
- Talk to a loved one or friend on the phone, because staying connected is essential for staying positive.
- Get in touch with your cultural heritage. It might not be the ideal time to visit older relatives, but you can still call them, look up old documents, or build a family tree.
- Want to up the ante for both connection and language learning? Find a tandem language partner from a different country and have a Skype chat with them.
- Plan a future (perhaps a far-future) vacation. Really get into the details: sights, where you’re going to eat, and where you’re going to stay.
- Teach your dog some tricks.
- Teach your cat some tricks. (Yes, you really can teach cats tricks.)
- Choose a new hobby that you’ve never tried and start learning about it.
- Learn to knit yourself some cozy socks or a scarf.
- Clean up your hard drive. Those 100+ photos you still have of your ex? Yeah, you don’t need them.
- Understand what the Danish word hygge really means, and then hyggify your apartment.
- Get a hot bubble bath going and make it extra cozy with nice candles and music.
- Learn to cook a new meal, like one of these soup recipes from around the world. If you order groceries online, you don’t even have to leave the house!
- Try your own language challenge, like this one where we dared our colleagues to start speaking a Scandinavian language in just one week.
- Do that spring cleaning you’ve been putting off the last couple years. Go into every nook and cranny and really clean it out.
- Write a letter. Yes, by hand! When was the last time you did that?
- Curl up with a cup of hot cocoa and read a good book. Don’t know what to read? Well, we actually run our own book club and are always offering new suggestions!
- Curl up with a cup of hot cocoa and write a good book.
- Watch a holiday film from a foreign country. Yes, the holidays are technically over, but you’re home alone, so no one has to know.
- Go into your old Pinterest account (we all know you had one) and recreate one pin that struck your interest back then.
- Learn how to say hello in 10 languages. It’s only 10 phrases, you can do it!