10 Healthy Habits for Home Life

There have gotta be upsides to staying home more often, and we’re here to share a few. Whether you’re reading this in the COVID era or well beyond, we’ve compiled a list of healthy home life habits that have helped us feel better about increased isolation. For the record, I’m speaking from experience here, but there are many things on my household to-do list that I’ve left off the record. I wouldn’t dare preach to you about all the raking I’ve avoided, or the eight books on my bedside table that each have a bookmark on chapter two. Check out the healthy habits I’ve picked up lately and share some of your personal favorites with us!

Bake your own bread!

Maybe you’re tired of hearing this, but it bears repeating. We’re certainly living in a show-off-your-bread-on-social-media moment, but don’t let the overwhelming trendiness prevent you from missing out on the benefits of baking. A friend of mine recently recommended a book called “Make the Bread, Buy the Butter” by Jennifer Reese. The basic idea is that many DIY projects are worth the time and effort, and many are not! Bread falls into the “cost savings” category, but I’d hardly consider that the most notable benefit.

The fact is: homemade bread tastes better than anything in the store, and it’s not hard to master. With zero prior experience, I started out with a Simply Crusty White Bread recipe, and evolved to the Pain de mie – both of which turned out to be way easier than I expected. I recently made an amazing batch of French bread, then graduated to Japanese Milk Bread, which I dare say is my favorite bread of all time. Pretty soon I’ll start experimenting with sour dough soon, expect a blog post all about that!

Invent a new soup

You’ve got the bread, now for the main course! Ditch the can, making soup from scratch is easy and delicious. This may seem intimidating to some, but with the right starter ingredients, I believe everyone is a soup chef in hiding. Last week I had a head of purple cabbage, smoked bacon, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, and bone broth, this ended up being a tasty and improvised stew! I didn’t have a recipe to start with, but the basics of cabbage soup are easy to riff off of. I suggest starting with a recipe and let your pantry fill in the details!

Shop local

There has been a huge surge in grocery shopping lately, as folks plan to stay home for a longer stretch. While I suggest supporting your local co-op year round, this era is especially important. Local farmers and vendors have been hit hard by the closing restaurants and canceled events, independent retail is one of the few remaining outlets to support them. Whether you’re reading this in April of 2020 or much later, the fact remains: our local food shops need our support to thrive and continue serving our community.

Shopping local matters, and so does voting with your dollar. Check out our recent post about buying B Corp.

Check on your gutters!

This one may be obvious, but you’d be amazed by the jungle that may be growing in your gutters! This should be a twice-a-year ritual for homeowners, and spring is the perfect time to get gloved-up and make room for rainwater! I found this Bob Vila instruction useful.

Stretch After Exercise

One of the most overlooked aspects of exercise: the post-workout stretch! All the Yoga folks out there know exactly what I mean, but for a casual basketball player (emphasis on casual) like myself, this can easily be forgotten. Check out these 6 simple stretches if you need a tip!

Schedule some social time

It’s never been more important to stay connected with friends and family, this cannot be overstated. I’ve found that setting your intention to socialize in advance can be helpful as heck, especially if you’re prone to losing track of time, or getting lost in your introverted activities around the house.

This Friday, a few of my friends are getting together on an app called houseparty, but you can also use Apple’s FaceTime, Google Hangouts, even Instagram has a group video chat option. There are also collaborative gaming platforms like Kahoot, if you want to get really creative! If you’re working from home, it can make a huge difference to have a little joy on the calendar to look forward to.

Examine your personal data organization

Whoa, now here’s something you might not have thought about: how messy is your personal file archive? Family photos, downloads, music library, old projects, the gigabytes can really stack up! As a professional photographer, I have a handful of terabytes to manage, but I believe this is crucial work for everyone. For me, many RAW files become unnecessary to hold onto over time, many duplicate files can occur, it’s important to examine these occurrences when you have downtime.

Even more important, take a look at your data backup situation and see if it could use improvement! If a file is important to you, it should live in at least two places, ideally more. Photos are the big thing that come to mind for many folks. Do you have a complete backup of your photo library? Are you syncing your photos with a cloud backup of some kind? This may be the least exciting bullet point on my list, but it could make a huge difference if your phone or computer gets lost.

Keep a clear garage

If you don’t have a garage, skip this one, and I recognize it is somewhat of a limited perspective I’m offering here. If you do, and you’re unable to park a vehicle in the garage due to storage or clutter, I’ve got an important message for you: Parking in a garage is one of the most subtle but incredible lifestyle upgrades I’ve discovered. For those indoor parkers out there, you know what I mean. If (and this is a big if) there’s a chance of rearranging your garage storage to accommodate your vehicle, I highly suggest prioritizing this project!

Garage space becomes even more important as we transition to driving electric vehicles. In case you missed it, check out our top five unexpected bonuses of driving an EV.

Smarter food storage

How neat is your pantry? How about your fridge? I asked myself this question a couple of weeks ago and it resulted in a complete gutting of my cabinets and fridge. If you ask my wife, I never put things back in the same place, and that’s obviously a recipe for disorganization. One trick to solving this of course is having designated spaces for each food item, and I’ve found that works nicely in the dry food storage cabinets. If you’re thinking about reorganizing your food storage, don’t put it off – the results are SO satisfying!

In addition to where food is stored, it’s also important to think about how food is stored. See our recent “Alternatives to Single-Use Plastics” for more inspiration.

Make your own granola

Ok, ok, I have already suggested you make soup AND bread, but what about the early hours of the day? Trust me, there is nothing easier and more rewarding than a fresh batch of homemade granola! I’ll make it simple and link you to my all time favorite recipe, but lemme just tease it by saying cornflakes are involved and you will NOT regret this.

Little changes to your daily routine really add up. If you’ve found any of these tips useful, or have some you’d like to share with our community, tag us on social media!

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