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The entire of the UK has been on lockdown, a completely unprecedented situation, since the 23rd March. For those of us who are not in one of the key worker positions this means isolation at home with our families or by ourselves. With only being allowed outside for exercise and essentials, the last few weeks of lockdown have been hard on everybody. Here are some of the things that I have been doing to cope with the Corvid-19 lockdown.
Working from home
Some of us are fortunate (or unlucky depending on your point of view) to be able to work from home. Either way you see it though for those that are able to work from home they are still able to receive a steady income that many others lose out on if not for government support.
That is the boat that Emma is currently in, whilst my role at the moment is focused on the household jobs. However I am able to support Emma by doing this by creating a nice environment to work in and to then separate work out and then relax in for her.
DIY Projects
We bought our home in December 2019 and we absolutely love it!
Well…we love owning our own home…but the design choices of the previous owners are maybe not to our taste.
I mean…who puts carpet in BATHROOMS?
I think that the majority of people in the UK have chosen the lockdown to finally get something or other sorted in their home. That being decorating, renovating, garden work or anything else like such within their homes.
I have definitely been one of these people, since we only moved into our home in December 2019 and our floors only got finished in February. Since then it has been a slow job of painting each room of the house, hanging up artwork and photographs after the painting has been done and other such jobs which are still going on now during the lockdown. We have also been hard at work with sorting out the garden
My parents have even gone as far as planning to renovate outside and have been looking at some Three Counties Windows to replace older ones as they have used Three Counties before.
This is what is still on our to do list:
Finish the garden – next year we want to create raised planters in the garden, but with lockdown we weren’t able to get the supplies we needed this year, and now my wife has planted her vegetable garden. In the mean time we want to redo the front garden and rip out a ton of hedges to replace with white stones and plant pots. We also need to finish painting the fences green, planting grass seed and hanging up solar lights
Redo the kitchen – a brand new kitchen isn’t in our budget just yet, but a cheap alternative is to paint the cabinets, get some tile stickers and get vinyl on the counters. This is a cheap way to update the kitchen before we look at an expensive new kitchen.
Paint the bathroom tiles – they are all white and boring, so we want to repaint them different colours. We have already done one bathroom – 3 more to go!
Rehang mirrors lower – having a short wife is fun! She can’t see herself in any of the mirrored cabinets or mirrors left behind by the previous owners, so I need to do this job for her!
Making Extra Money
Thankfully there are still opportunities online in which to make extra money. These can be great for those that are struggling.
I have continued doing these regularly during the lockdown.
There are the receipt apps on your smartphone like Shoppix and Receipt Hog, where you can take photos of your receipt and earn money or Amazon gift cards. Shoppix has also started to accept online receipts to help people to still earn in the current climate.
Airtime Rewards will generate credit to use against your mobile phone bill so is a great one to use to help save money. Just link your main spending cards to the app and everytime you spend at certain places then the credit will be automatically added.
There are also plenty of survey apps for your smartphone and online sites. My most favourite site for doing surveys on has to be Prolific Academic as once you have filled out all the information it will only direct to you surveys that you won’t be screened out of which is a massive bonus. They also have been the easiest survey site I have found to reach the payout threshold.
