I’m sure we have all been re-evaluating things recently, from our life goals to food choices. At least personally, I don’t know anyone who’s entirely impervious to the current situation, and that makes me quite happy with my choice of friends. Some recalibration is certainly in order and while I will – as usual – stay away from the existential stuff, here are a few slightly smaller things I’ve done a U-turn on.

Routine*. I see myself as someone who doesn’t like routine. When the question comes up in personality tests, I always reply I’m bad at handling it. I hate it when the days are alike, I would go mad if my work involved constant repetition or I had to stick to the same recipes or clothes for an extended period. That said, I have realised that I benefit greatly from a certain amount of routine. Exactly because I’m creative, impatient and interested in everything, I need structure. Because I’m dedicated, passionate and tend to get carried away, I need limits. This has become abundantly clear in the last month.

Routine and routines are especially useful when you work from home and are stuck inside most of the day. It is important both for making sure you get stuff done and for making sure you don’t work 20 hours straight. All this talk of getting up at the same time, doing your skincare, putting on clothes, going to a dedicated place to work: there’s a reason why every single influencer has made a video about it. Because it does help. Something I found surprising is that while I’m overworked most of the time, it can be rather disorientating when you are drowning in work at home – because we are (or at least I am) not used to this happening in that setting. So I get up seven-ish every day, work out at 8, eat breakfast, eat lunch, take breaks and try to finish at a reasonable time; not surprisingly, it’s the latter that I have most trouble with.

Skype (Zoom, FaceTime, Webex, etc). Even though I live far away from family and many friends, I have always been sceptical of video calls, teleconferencing and other similar things. It doesn’t replace the face-to-face contact, I used to say. It’s just terribly awkward, I used to think. Well, turns out that when actual human contact is not possible, seeing someone on screen isn’t that bad. I had not used my Skype account for years and was very surprised that I could in fact recall the password. I dug it out so that I could have French lessons twice a week with my lovely teacher. It works surprisingly well and as it’s more flexible than doing it physically, I have only missed one lesson. Victoria over at Bois de Jasmin recommends the Italki web site for online language learning and if she (with her 17 languages) recommends it, I’m not going to argue. 

Perhaps more surprisingly, working out over FaceTime with a trainer has also been fun and effective. For now, I do it five times a week: three sessions of my ‘normal’ resistance training and two sessions of shadowboxing. I am devoted to Paul Tucker Personal Training (you can check them out here – online sessions should be available to non-members as well), but on ‘off’ days I do more gentle stuff I find online. (Pro tip: Tracy Anderson does not qualify as gentle exercise.) I wonder why it never occurred to me to keep training with my PT over video when travelling or on holiday?

For work, virtual meetings have become indispensable, be they quick video calls with close colleagues, huge discussions with 30 participants of high-level contacts between the Commission and its partners. And you know what? It works. I don’t think we’ll ever go back to doing it the old-fashioned way, especially considering the impact travel has on our planet.

Cleaning. The same way I’m not a routine person, I am not a tidy person. I do not like cleaning and I have done very little of it for years: J used to take on most of the burden in the early days and we’ve had a professional cleaner for 10 years or so. In the current circumstances, it’s of course not feasible to have someone else clean the house and even with my levels of selfishness, I cannot really expect my partner to clean three floors of a huge house alone. So I have been cleaning. More surprisingly still, I have been craving a clean house.

Anyone who has seen my office desk knows that I can thrive in awful chaos and I never really minded if my home was messy. Until now. When I have to spend most of my day indoors, with other people, working, I find the mess distracting and annoying. Things that didn’t bother me when I got home late, spent an hour reading and went to bed, now drive me to distraction. I have probably done more housework in the last three weeks than I have in previous five years combined. My biggest frustration is that I cannot get my hands on two big shelves, so that I could finally organise my books. Bottom line: not only is cleanliness advisable now for health reasons, it is great for one’s peace of mind and productivity.

Batch cooking. What really caught me off guard in the isolation is how much food a family consumes when everyone is at home at all times. Even worse – someone has to cook all that food. Now don’t get me wrong, I love cooking. But three times a day, every day, especially if you also have to work, exercise, study French, read, write, interact with people? No, thank you. Even when you share the duties within the family (as we do), it’s still a lot.

While I have always acknowledged the practical benefits of batch cooking, I have found it a bit sad, too pragmatic. I’ve changed my mind. If I had a functioning freezer, I would absolutely do it. I’m in particular thinking of making a huge quantity of ratatouille before the soft vegetables go bad and then using it as side dish, pasta sauce, wrap filling and a proper meal with maybe some cheese melted on top. In the absence of a proper freezer, it’s already helpful to make a bigger quantity of whatever you are making for dinner, so that you can have it for lunch the next day.

Hand cream. I used to detest hand cream. There were some versions I detested slightly less than others, but overall I always felt I had something still on my hands after using them. Consequently, I had to wipe my hands clean or, worse, wash them, rendering the original act of moisturisation entirely pointless. These days, the choice is of course between having cracked, bleeding lumps instead of hands or using hand cream, so I’ve become a reluctant convert. I have also established that I find Le Labo hand lotion light, effective and tolerable. For more heavy-duty stuff (mostly in the evening), my current favourite is Lanolips Rose Hand Cream Intense.

Masks. I admit I’m one of those people who used to laugh at Asians for wearing masks (not really in the corona context, but before that) and was in February still convinced that masks are silly. Ah, how times change. I’m no epidemiologist and there is lots of conflicting information out there, so I’m not going to reproduce the entire discussion here. But in case I’m asymptomatic and might infect others, I’m going to wear a mask** when I go out. If it improves the odds even by 1%, it’s worth it. If nothing else, it keeps my dirty hands off my face.

Somehow my posts keep getting longer and longer and not necessarily more informative, but it is what it is. If the blog is turning into a mind dump, well, I guess my mind needs to be dumped. How are you doing? Anything you are thinking differently about these days?

*I’m cheating slightly with this one, as I have been changing my mind about routine and routines for a while now.

**I am not stealing them from doctors, I doubt they would find the Lilli Jahilo versions helpful.

Pictured: a cloth mask by Lilli Jahilo, lavender hand cream by Cosmydor and coffee capsules that I ordered from My Little Cup – to make sure they are still there when going to cafes is again a thing.