All of California is ordered to stay indoors unless specifically working or on errands or such. I take the dog for a walk regularly, but other than that, I’ve been cooped-up. Here are a couple of life hacks that may be helpful. Feel free to add your own.
* Cut your fingernails. You can wash your hands as much as you like, but unless you are taking a brush scrubber to your fingernails, you’re missing a big part that is in close proximity to whatever your hands touch. This mostly applies to women and vampire men. It is standard procedure for nurses. Maybe doctors, I don’t know. I don’t chat with doctors. https://www.nursingtimes.net/archive/nail-cutting-is-an-essential-part-of-nursing-15-07-2008/
* In extreme laundry situations, some items can be frozen/thawed and get an extra wear out of them. This is particularly true for jeans. I found this out some years ago when designers were upset that people were washing their jeans. It won’t kill (many) germs or bacteria sitting in your freezer, but it will liven them up a bit.
* Whatever your dental hygiene practices are, make sure they are solid and rigorous. I can’t imagine anyone going in for a regular cleaning any time soon. The offices might be the height of cleanliness (and most have extremely stringent requirements based on my long ago work at a Dental HMO), but it’s hard to picture sitting there with your mouth open for 30 minutes. And it’s equally hard to picture a dentist (or poor hygienist) dealing with those dangerous mouths. So brush and floss like it might have to last you a while.
* Bread is easy. Flour. Water. Oven. Yeah, you can add salt. Yeah, you can add baking powder. Or raisens. Or turkey legs. But you really just need flour and water and an oven. That will give you a hard tack bread (like a saltine cracker crossed with a brick). I’ve made 3 sheets and just popped one today. I made a modified recipe of wheat flour, baking powder, sprinkle salt, sugar, bit of maple syrup, butter, an egg. And I made flour out of flaxseeds. I got more flaxseeds than I know what to do with. I bought like a gallon of them online (least they had) and they’ve been sitting around. Their shelf life, when in seed form, is years. The bread is good. Could have used a little more sweet.
* It’s a little late, but I had a supply of disposable rubber gloves. About 15 years ago I was doing a Halloween costume. I found the doctor costumes were all cheesy and expensive. About 8 years before that, instead of buying a knock-off priest shirt, I went to a religious supply store and got the real deal for less cost and ten times the quality. And the nuns there kept calling me, “father.” So I did the same thing and bought my doctor’s costume at a medical supply wholesaler. Lab coat. Name tag. Some cheap medical tools. And rubber gloves. And I was like, wow, these gloves are really practical. They were real surgeon gloves. And I used them for years. When I was using a super caustic cleaner or liquid plumber or oiling my bike. You get some organic hydrocarbons on your skin (like oil) and that stuff sticks around for days. So I’d use maybe 2 gloves a year. And I have my 2nd or 3rd box. They got cost like $6, which is way cheaper than the drug store and they’re way better.
* You don’t have to NOT go to the gym. You can NOT excercise at home. Our bodies are pretty damn heavy. You can thoroughly exhaust yourself and keep fit just by hefting your own body this way and that. If you simply must lift an item, you can use leverage against you. I used to have a stool I would do curls with. It wasn’t heavy at all, but it was long. And as Newton proved in his famous equation, stool=curl^3/l(m*n). Where l = liccorice, of course.
* Get plenty of sleep. We become more susceptible to colds, flu, crankiness, and other ailments when we are sleep deprived. Stop drinking coffee if it’s keeping you up. Lift a bunch of stools all day. You’ll get sleep whether you want it or not. But schedule it and take it.
Stay safe.
