My Self-Quarantine Routine

I am very fortunate to have the opportunity to work from home amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the stay at home order and encouragement of social distancing, my daily routine has certainly changed a little bit - in some ways for the better! It took me a few days to get the hang of things, but I think I've found some things that really work for me.

Here's what I've been up to lately ~
Working from home
I wake up one hour later than I usually do and head to the dining room where I have my work laptop set up. I sign on, email my boss to let him know I'm online and get working! The majority of my job can be done by sitting in front of a screen, so I'm just doing that in a different location and occasionally taking or receiving calls to my cell phone instead of my office phone.

While I wait for files to download or when I get a small break, I finish getting ready for the day including changing out of my sleep clothes, putting on contacts and sometimes even applying make up. In order to let my face "rest" a little bit more, on weekdays I usually only put on make up every Tuesday and Thursday. No one outside the house really sees me, but it just helps me feel a little bit better when I look in the mirror lol.

My husband is also working from home and he set himself up in the office upstairs. This allows us to have some space to focus during working hours and also have (work related) phone conversations without bothering each other too much. We're both often on conference calls which can sometimes run quite long, so it's good that the other person doesn't have to listen to the whole thing. We do still cross paths every so often of course, but for the most part we'll keep to ourselves while we're on the clock.

Exercise
Once work is done, we might relax for an hour or so, but try to get a little exercise in. I always try to change into my workout clothes right after I log off to give myself less of an excuse to skip it.

After some disruptive weather for the first couple of days, we settled on:
Monday - 3 mile run
Tuesday - 100 burpees or similar workout we can do in the driveway or indoors if rainy
Wednesday - 1-2 mile walk
Thursday - 100 burpees or similar workout
Friday - 3 mile run
Saturday/Sunday - yard work (which is actually pretty exhausting wtf)
Nothing too exciting, but this mirrors my workout routine that I used to have when I was going into the office. On Mondays and Fridays, I used to run at lunch time with my coworkers (about 2.5 miles) and on Tuesdays and Thursdays (also at lunch time), my boss or his boss would run "crossfit" which includes a lot of circuit exercises for 30 min. It was my idea to substitute the burpees for circuit exercises, but I think if we get tired of doing burpees, we'll probably look for a replacement (youtube video maybe?). For now, I'm actually kind of enjoying how much of a "full body" workout burpees feel like without having to do a big variety of exercises and it's easy because no equipment required.

What we eat
For meals, we've been somewhat inconsistent with breakfast and lunch while we're working whereas when I was in the office, I had a pretty routine schedule of what I would eat and when. Since we don't really leave the house for lunch, I usually just find something that we already have on hand and often skip breakfast in favor of lunch or eat a really late breakfast and skip lunch for an early dinner.

For dinner, we try to make something at least once a week that generates a few meals of leftovers, but we also know that some of the remaining restaurants that are still open for take out need customers too.

We're in a pretty fortunate situation where we can afford to order from restaurants, so we don't mind "treating ourselves" to something for dinner more often than before. We mostly get take out on the weekends. We also participated in the #keephawaiicooking campaign by Central Pacific Bank while it was running by ordering from O'Kims!

Purchases/splurges
We didn't go out an exorbitant amount prior to the stay at home order, but I'm kind of enjoying using it as an excuse to kind of just sit in the house and do nothing. That being said, I did opt for a few "splurges" outside of what I would typically buy just as small things to keep us entertained while we stay in.
Larme 044 and 045 ordered from Amazon JP

I used to buy a japanese magazine or two every so often if the cover piqued my interest, but have definitely taken a step away from that for a couple years. I saw that some of the spring EATME items were going to be featured in a spread, and decided I would enjoy looking through some pretty pictures. Amazon JP is relatively easy to order from and it was delivered by DHL within the week.

Ben and Jerrys ice cream

This might seem mundane or kind of lame but I've never had Ben and Jerry's ice cream before but after watching one too many Good Mythical Morning videos, we were determined to get a pint or two just for fun. Staying in seemed like a good excuse to just sit and eat some ice cream. We bought Chocolate Fudge Brownie and Peanut Butter Cup first and then during a sale at a different grocery store the following week, we also got The Tonight Dough and Half Baked.

I've been doing a LOT of online shopping browsing, but really haven't had a chance to commit to anything yet. Some brands seem to be offering some not bad deals and most have a pretty good shipping/return policy right now but there isn't anything that I'm dying to buy...aside from an expensive office chair which I probably don't really need lol.

Social media
I definitely don't really have the motivation to fully get ready for work while I'm not going into the office, so my content has been suffering with regards to my "work outfits". However, I got a great suggestion from @smallestsloth on IG to do a favorite/featured item on my story daily instead and I think it's been working out really well!

I have full access to my closet while I'm home and it just takes a couple minutes to snap the photos so it doesn't really take away from my workday.

In general, I opted to post a lot more to my IG story than I usually do and kind of gave up on trying to make regular post content for the time being (until something comes along to motivate me). It's been fun just posting whatever and also seeing lots of other people's stories as well.

Also spent some time going through my old content! I've shared some older photos in my "fashion look back" post but here's some additional embarrassing photos that I thought were a bit fun lol.

There's not much more to it than that! I recently discovered the Wordscapes app and despite the incessant ads, I'm kind of addicted. I'll sometimes just sit around and watch TV (Hulu, Netflix or Disney+). I'm currently mainly rewatching How to Get Away with Murder while folding origami cranes. I finished the 1000 but am working on an additional 100 in red foil and 100 in silver foil and it's going pretty slowly lol.

My thoughts and prayers go out to you if you've been negatively affected by the pandemic in any way - whether it's being laid off, having to postpone an important event or yourself/family member/friend being diagnosed. A special shout out to those who are working in essential businesses, keeping all of the rest of us afloat, especially those in healthcare.
Feel free to share what you've been doing to keep busy during self-quarantine!