Lockdown sucks. We’re all going through it, and we’re all feeling extremely over it.
Prioritising self-care and wellbeing is essential to getting through this, but after 200-odd days, it can be hard to get up and shake off that Groundhog Day feeling.
Sometimes we just need a little nudge to remind us to put ourselves first. To take a deep breath and relax. To give ourselves that little reward we definitely deserve by now. That’s why I’ve put together a list of 3 apps that have made practising self-care a lot easier for me.
Whether it’s by calming your headspace, indulging your desires or keeping you moving, these apps will help you maintain a bit of joy in your life during lockdown
1. Providoor, for bringing Melbourne’s best food straight to your kitchen.
Let’s start with the good stuff first.
Sure, things like mindfulness and exercise play important roles in cultivating personal happiness. But we can all agree that the best kind of self-care is the kind you can eat and drink.
Providoor has elevated the home-delivery experience into something truly special. With a focus on heat-at-home meals & top-shelf quality control, they’ve earned themselves the support of some of Melbourne and Sydney’s top restaurants. Add in a tablecloth, your best dinnerware & some creative lighting, and your kitchen will become the heart of the CBD.
Imagine tucking into strozzapreti from Di Stasio, wagyu steaks & whole roasted prawns from Rockpool, or the famous duck bao from Supernormal. Feeling extra fancy? Try pairing caviar with a live cocktail class from the geniuses at Gimlet instead. Trust me, you’ll forget all about the lockdown.
2. Centr, for keeping you healthy and balanced amidst the chaos.
It’s hard to stay on top of your well-being in lockdown. When your whole life is spent at home, a routine can seem almost impossible to maintain. But without it, calm and focus start to feel like distant memories.
That’s why Centr has been an absolute life-saver for me during lockdown. At its core, this is an exercise app – yet it manages to be so much more. By expanding its focus to include mindfulness sessions, guided meditation, and healthy meal plans, Centr is a one-stop shop for staying on top of your physical and mental wellbeing.
Carving out space to reflect and be calm has helped me cultivate and maintain a sense of inner peace during an often frustrating time. And the combination of stimulating exercise regimes and healthy meal plans have kept me feeling positive and driven, instead of just sinking into apathy on the couch.
Maintaining healthy habits is a crucial part of self-care, but it definitely takes practice. As a tool for keeping yourself accountable and focused, I cant recommend Centr enough.
3. Offtime, for helping you to disconnect and get your time back.
For most of us, working from home has increasingly blurred the lines between work-time and personal time. It makes it harder and harder to unplug and switch off at the end of the day.
Even when we do manage to stop working, we’ll still stay glued to our screens, mindlessly scrolling through social media or online shopping. It’s bad for our bodies and our minds, yet it’s not easy to stop on your own.
Offtime is an app that’s focused on helping you to disconnect from all that and get your time back. At a time when we’re confined to our homes, this feels more important than ever. Offering features like scheduling tools, soft call blockers, daily screen-time limits and usage insights, Offtime asks us to rethink the relationships we’re currently building with our devices.
I’ve found Offtime to be an indispensable tool for unplugging at the end of the day and spending quality time with my family. Because really, it’s a bit of love and self-care – not just hard work – that’s going to get us through this in the end.
All of us here at Ezytaxback know how tough lockdown can be sometimes, but at least we’re all in this together. It might feel neverending now, but before we know it we’ll all be back on the streets enjoying some good times with our loved ones.
In the meantime, I hope these apps can help you to achieve some peace of mind. They’ve certainly helped me hold on to my sanity!