Five Long-Term Projects to Keep You Busy at Home All Quarantine Long

I have a confession: I’m a total homebody. Even when I was in my late teens/early twenties and doing some drinking and some partying, you’d still have been twice as likely to find me sitting on my porch swing reading a book than anywhere else. Since I found a remote job last year (finally!), I work at home, eat at home, study at home, and do pretty much everything at home. I spend probably 160 out of 168 hours a week in my house, and yet I still have to exercise every ounce of willpower in my possession not to back out of plans — unless they’re at my house. Then we’re good. I’m not introverted nor am I shy. I just never seem to run out of things to do at home, which is why I think I can be a big help to lots of people right now.

Since it looks like everyone in the country will be living my lifestyle — which is apparently called lockdown — for a while, now seems like a great time to start looking at long-term projects that won’t just keep you sane and entertained in the short run (there’s only so much binge watching a person can take) but will help you stay busy and productive so you can come out the other side of COVID19 with new skills to put to work.

While there are tons of exciting things to do at home, from learning to code to tackling that next DIY project to brewing your very own beer in case of apocalyptic shortage, I’ve got a few go-to projects I always fall back on when I feel like barricading myself in my house — for whatever reason. These long-term, at-home projects aren’t just great for lockdown, they’re also awesome for anytime you’re stuck at home, whether you’re going through a stint of unemployment or you don’t have the funds to go out or you’re just sick of the bar scene and ready to not be bloated and hung over all Sunday. So without further ado, here’s a lifelong homebody’s top five long-term projects to keep you busy at home.

Learn to Cook

Cooking is one of my favorite at-home pastimes because, not only can it provide hours of fun and entertainment, you also get to eat at the end! Of all the projects on this list, cooking gives the quickest gratification, since you can usually consume what you make right away. Of course, if you don’t know to avoid burning, drying out, or otherwise screwing up your dish, you can wind up with something even the dog won’t eat. Learning to cook one dish doesn’t take much time. But since there are so many different forms of cooking, from baking to frying to grilling to sautéing to roasting, learning to cook a lot of different dishes can suck up weeks of your life on lockdown, especially if you’ve mostly eaten restaurant food before the outbreak.

I know, takeout is a lot easier, but since we’re all suddenly looking to tighten our belts as well as find sources of stay-at-home entertainment, cooking is the stone that can kill both those birds. It takes up a lot of time, and groceries are usually cheaper than healthy, nutritious takeout. Here are a few of my go-to recipes to get you started. If you already know what you’re doing, this post isn’t for you. I plan to get a few posts with some more complex dishes up at some point, but for now, these are all easy enough for any beginner to experiment around with to get comfortable in the kitchen. I’ve included tips, pictures, and step-by-step instructions so there’s no ambiguity.

However, it’s important to note that one of the fundamental secrets to cooking well is don’t follow the recipe. Sure, follow it in the sense that you use all or most of the ingredients and do basically what the instructions say, but the greatest piece of advice I can give anyone just starting to learn to cook is to constantly smell and taste your food as you’re preparing it. Obviously, this suggestion has some limitations, like if your dish contains raw meat or fish, you shouldn’t be sampling it. However, you can taste your sauces before you pour them over your meats, and you can continue to smell your dishes throughout the cooking process. The assumption is that you will eventually change every recipe you use based on your tastes, preferences, and environment. Eventually, this will become second nature, but it can take awhile to master the art of tweaking your recipes.

Write a Novel

If learning to cook offers the quickest gratification on this list, writing a book offers the slowest. Without a doubt, it will take a lot longer than COVID19 lockdown is going to last (hopefully!). However, if you’re looking for a project that will both take up a lot of time and make that time fly right by, getting a book started fits that bill. Even more than that, it’s a rewarding hobby that can eventually leave you with a tangible end-result you can be proud of.

I’m currently three years into a sci-fi/fantasy series that’s requiring me to do all the physics and biology research of a science fiction book, all the historical research of a period piece, and all the world building of a fantasy series. Needless to say, now that I’m laid-off and quarantined, this the thing that’s sucking up most of my time. Writing this series has come with a steep learning curve for me. Even though I got my MA in creative writing, I spent the vast majority of my time on memoir and short story, so until I got a couple years into this book, my understanding of novel writing was always more theoretical than practical. Still, it’s the first novel I’ve started that I didn’t wind up throwing in the trash, so I must be learning something.

Every author has their own writing process, and there’s a ton of advice out there for how to get your novel started, but I thought I’d give a few pointers of my own. This is stuff I’ve learned after years of trial-and-error, terrible epic-fail novels, and finally getting a book off the ground that I wasn’t embarrassed to send out for feedback. The novel is turning out to be the toughest and longest project I’ve ever tackled, but don’t let that intimidate you; it’s also been the most enjoyable, rewarding, and soothing projects I’ve ever done. If you’re having trouble dealing with all the fear and uncertainty in the world right now, there’s a lot to be said for the mental health benefits of writing fiction.

Plant a Garden

Of all the projects on this list, this is my most recent addition. I’ve been potting indoor plants for several years, but now that I own my house, I’ve decided to spend this spring getting into outdoor gardening. So far, I’ve built four flower beds of varying sizes and gotten a veggie garden started. I’ve tilled the plot, planted some peppers and onions, and started a few shelves-full of tomato and herb seeds in their own red solo cups. I’m not sure how it’s going to go yet. Check back with me at the end of the summer, and I’ll let you know if I killed my okra plants.

For now, I’ll stick to writing what I know, which is potted gardens! For several years, I’ve been doing indoor flowers, succulents, and herbs to varying degrees of success. But after a few brutal plant murders in those first few months, I’ve figured out how to grow a lot of different things. As with everything else on this list, getting good at keeping plants not only alive, but happy, healthy, and producing takes just as much persistence as it does study. No matter how much you read, you’re probably going to wind up killing at least one plant. Some things are easier to keep alive than others. See my post on potted plants for details on how to keep your container garden going strong.

Learn a New Language

This one, like the novel, is tougher and more time consuming than some of the other projects on this list. It took me a couple years to become passably proficient in Spanish after I went to Puerto Rico at the end of 2016 and realized I forgot every single word I ever learned. Now, I can hold a conversation in just about any topic, though I still stumble and need to ask for vocab help more often than I’d like. Recently, I’ve gotten comfortable enough in Spanish that I’m starting to learn Arabic, which is my spouse’s native language. Arabic is a whole lot harder for native English speakers to learn than any Romance Language, not in the least because it has a completely unfamiliar alphabet, so I’m expecting my third language to be a lot slower going than my second was.

For many of us Americans, this project can be especially challenging, and not just because native speakers of English tend to be monolingual. The unfortunate thing about language learning classes in the US is that they often don’t work, not because they don’t teach you the basics, but because they don’t teach you how to learn a language beyond the classroom. Classes are just the first step, and it never even occurred to me that I wasn’t picking up the language I was practicing because the courses I took never taught me how to continue learning beyond their curricula. I had to figure that out on my own after a lot of false starts and frustration. So in this post, I’ve outlined my five-step plan for picking up a new language on your own, at home, without blowing much (if any) money.

Get Crafting

There’s a whole world of arts and crafts out there for you to explore. You can pick up pottery, painting, wood carving, jewelry making, or any darned thing you want. That’s the great thing about crafts — they really let you get crazy with your imagination and create something unique. Throughout my life, I’ve dabbled in rock polishing, jewelry making, and even a little furniture building. However, the thing that really stuck has been my butterfly collection, which I started when I was ten.

Even though making the boxes is pretty quick, I still call this a long-term project because it can take you months, even years, to get really good at handling the butterflies and making distinct frames that are honest-to-god works of art. I messed up my share of butterflies before I developed the muscle memory to properly handle their delicate bodies. I also experimented with every kind of background, from blank paper to printed pictures to even pressed flowers and four-leaf clovers, before I finally nailed down my own personal style.

If you’re squeamish about killing insects, this particular craft is probably not for you. But if you want to learn to create unique, beautiful, natural decorations for your home (sustainably, of course), read my how-to on butterfly boxes. This post will take you step by step through the process, from catching your specimens all the way to framing them. The great thing about this particular project is you can order your shadowboxes online and collect your specimens outside, far away from people — no gloves or mask required!

Conclusion

I hope these suggestions have helped give you some ideas for how to pass the next few weeks of social distancing. Remember, the coronavirus lockdown isn’t going to last a lifetime, but if you turn off the TV and get cracking, you can develop new skills or create new works of art that will.