Covid Diaries: What is changing at home?!
The lockdown is having a huge impact and we are all grappling with a lot of changes in our lives. We ran a short diary to understand what the impact of enforced lockdowns & formation of new habits and got an overwhelming response of over 500+ responses in just about 3 days.
We had about 60% people stating household chores as the biggest change. This isn’t surprising considering the fact that in India we have the luxury of maids and cooks and in these times we have turned into one ourselves. It wouldn’t be wrong to say this is a very third world problem that we are facing due to the lockdown.
“I am helping in household chores, which previously I have never done in my life” M, 36–45, Working Professional
The next biggest change has been with respect to entertainment. About 50% of the people have mentioned increase in streaming, TV consumption and online newspapers. Due to the increase in streaming and the bandwidth it takes, major OTT players have reduced their video quality. The network providers are struggling to meet the streaming needs of people. We face bad internet connectivity everyday!
Gaming is another domain which has grown exponentially. From online games to board games, people are playing all. I have personally played 5 different games (4 offline and 1 online) during the lockdown, something which I never did before!
One would expect that being locked down at home has a negative impact on people’s schedule but interestingly people seem to be having a more systematic schedule than before.
“Working from home with strict schedule, planned breaks and keeping the video camera ON in all meetings , the change has been actually positive as I am saving 2 hours of drive time (up and down)” M, 36–45, Working Professional
A large number of people have figured out time for exercising which was hard before and speak about eating healthy food (home cooked ofcourse!).
“I have been spending more time on physical activity than I used to, before lockdown. This is because I am now able to extract more time from my schedule” F, 18–25, Student
“I’ve started eating more homemade food. Being someone who’s lived outside for a very long time now, eating unhealthy restaurant-made food was something that I had picked up which occurred almost every week. But ever since the lockdown I’ve been eating timely meals. Breakfast, Lunch, a Evening snack and dinner before 9pm, is the new routine “ F, 18–25, Student
Many women have spoken about ME time and being able to get that now.
“This lockdown has proven positive to me in someway as I always wanted to have some ME time” F, 36–45, Working Professional
It is not clear whether in such times being a part of a large family is better or being alone.
“Being a part of such a large household, house help was extremely important to us. Without the maids, cook, driver etc we have to do everything ourselves” F, 18–25, Family of 10
“The single biggest change is having to cook for both lunch and dinner. I’ve to make breakfast and lunch which interferes with working hours, so sometimes I skip meals, which isn’t healthy.” F, 26–35, Living Alone
We are living in tough times. This too will pass but hopefully soon! Stay indoors! Stay safe! We will soon be back with our next part of Covid diary.
