Top tips for maintaining a social life in lockdown – Emma Steele

Maintaining a social life and communication with others, even if it’s virtual, is SO important during these strange times. Whether it’s to help your mental health & wellbeing, to tackle the struggles that lockdown brings, or just to give you something to do, these tips are here for you!

As students, living through a pandemic is incredibly frustrating. Uni is the best years of your life for a lot of people, therefore being confined to a house, or halls, can be demoralising and boring. However, we must remain positive and make the best out of a bad situation. So, with no further ado, here are my top tips for socialising (within the government guidelines, of course) during lockdown!

Make a ‘Saturday Night Jar’!

Grab your housemates, give everyone a piece of paper and a pen and each write a ‘Saturday night plan’ on your paper! (These could include: Themed fancy dress night, drinks and games, e.g. beer pong, night, movie marathon etc.)

Next, fold up all the pieces of paper and put them in a jar. Every Saturday, someone picks a piece of paper out of the jar and that’s what you’re doing! This saves sitting around and spending a long time deciding what to do and gives a little excitement!

Workout challenges!

There is an abundance of free and paid challenges you can sign up for, or you can make your own! Exercising and remaining active is so good for your mental and physical wellbeing!

Sending letters/cards to friends and family.

This is a little gesture which goes a long way. Maybe even put a few pictures of happy memories into the envelope – the app ‘Freeprints’ allows you to print 45 free pictures a month, making this top tip an inexpensive one!

Order an outfit for you best friend (or family member!).

Set a price limit and each spend a little time choosing a new outfit and get them delivered to your friend’s house! (Probably best to order from somewhere you can return things though…)

A Weekly Roundup

This could be done with your housemates or on zoom with friends or family. Some things you could include: 3 best things that happened in the week (remember, positivity is key!), a funny story, worst moment, a dream, best meal!

Date Night!

This one’s for all you love birds! Plan a date night where you aim to cook the same meal and maybe have a little competition of which one looks the best! A date night also gives you the opportunity to put on some nice clothes and do your hair and makeup, giving that highly missed feel-good factor.

Start an online book club!

Meet every few weeks to discuss the book and how everyone is coping with lockdown.

House Come Dine with Me!

Each house member takes it in turn to cook a 2 or 3 course dinner and the other members score at the end of the night! Make it more interesting by giving a prize to the winner!

House pub golf!

Make each room a different theme and drink! You could theme your rooms as countries, so the Mexican room could be tequila! Spend the same amount of time in each room and fancy dress is a must!

Make a power-point presentation of your choice!

Share it over zoom with your friends/family! It could include best memories, favourite holidays, worst boyfriends/girlfriends!

Thank you all for reading today’s blog, I hope you enjoyed my top tips for maintaining a social life in lockdown! Be sure to let us know what you think, and drop us a line if you try out any of these suggestions!

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