Advice From The Plague Pits: Shape Your Space!

We are now roughly a month into quarantine, and by now you should have learned three languages, taught yourself to play the harpsichord, and achieved samsara through the perfection of Buddhist meditation.

Fuck that.

Look, if you can use this time for profitable self-improvement, then do so. But this isn’t some pleasant vacation: this is traumatic seclusion, where you’re in parts equally concerned about thousands of people (possibly even you or someone you love) dying of a fatal disease and also can I get toilet paper before we run out?

So be a little merciful on yourself. This isn’t your sixth-grade recess, this is bolting doors against the plague – and if the stress is impinging your abilities for self-improvement, then don’t beat yourself up over that.

But there is one thing I will suggest you take the time to do in lockdown, even if you don’t feel you’re up to it:

Take some time to redecorate your living quarters.

Seriously. Hang up some art, push the beds around, or at the very least do as thorough a spring cleaning as you can manage. And here’s my rationale:

Most of you had a home that was somewhat of a transient space – you went out to work, you went out with friends, you went out to get coffee. And now, in this time of solitude, your home is less of a “I’m here for a few hours and then out again” and more of a soft prison.

And chances are there’s something you’ve been tiptoeing around in your apartment. Maybe it’s that closet stuffed full of unsorted games. Maybe it’s that spare room you’ve been meaning to turn from a junk space into a reading nook. Maybe it’s just that the windows are boring.

Sure, you meant to learn Italian some day, but even if you did that’s not gonna pay immediate dividends. Yet sprucing up your home will pay off immediately – because you’re there, more often than you meant to be, and not only will a change of scenery benefit you, but you’ll be shaping your living space into a place more suited to your mood and your needs.

So yeah. Hang a couple of dreamcatchers in the window, scrub the grime out of the tub, rearrange the bookshelves. Because every time you walk by those posters you hung in the hallway, you’ll not only feel a little pride because you accomplished something you’d been meaning to do, but also that accomplishment will have turned your home into something that feels, well, homier.

This is gonna be your space for another couple of weeks, at least. So shape it to suit you.

And hang in there. With a little luck, we’ll get through this. I know it’s rough.