I know leading a household is hard and requires a lot of time and work, so in no way would I want to suggest that people who just take care of their household don’t work enough. Especially if there are kids you have to take care of, I can’t begin to imagine how difficult that must be.
Even though I don’t have kids, I am writing this based on my own experience, as I am in this situation myself, being at home taking care of the household. There are a lot of chores to complete every day around the house, so you might be busy all day but you might not feel that those chores are meaningful or that you had a productive day doing them. Maybe you’ll feel similar to me, wanting to do something extra that would give you that sense of accomplishment. If you find yourself in what you’re reading, then stay with me and below you’ll find the things that have helped me feel more productive.
Sign up for online courses and learn new skills. Most of the time I use www.udemy.com for this. You’ll find free courses as well as paid ones, very often they have deals when the paid courses cost only a few quid. You could learn a skill that will help you find a job in the future, or one you could use to get remote jobs. There are courses in every topic possible. I have just recently finished my personal trainer course, I did that one through www.thetrainingroom.com and I am planning to start a nutritionist course next.
Set up a blog. This point is actually connected to the first one; on udemy I study courses about setting up a website and about writing articles in general.
Once you have your blog set up, work on improving it. This is a never ending process, a task that you’ll be busy with constantly. You can play around with different themes and pictures. It’s work but it’s very rewarding and a lot of fun!
You don’t know what to write about? It could be something you’re good at, or a hobby of yours, you’ll find a market for every topic. Do you like cooking? Start a blog on recipes that you like. Do you like to travel? You can write about traveling.
Or if your biggest passion are your kids and you have set ways on how to raise them, you can write about that. I write about traveling, I post healthy recipes, workouts, funny stories that happened to us and so on. True, I don’t have millions of followers (yet) but I am working on it, making by blog better every day.
You can also join steemit. It will help you improve your writing, find out what people are interested in as you get feedback from other members. I usually spend 1 hour a day on steemit reading and commenting other people’s posts, when I write my own posts it tends to be more than that but then I post those on my blog too.Go to the gym and workout. Finally one you don’t need a computer for, right? I go to the gym 5 times a week, and I feel 100% better thanks to it. I cannot imagine my life without working out, it’s one of the most rewarding activities you can do, as you’ll start seeing your body changing towards the better soon. Start doing yoga. Join classes in your area or just find some routines on YouTube that you can do at home. You could also start running (if your knees allow it). Any kind of exercise will make you feel great.
Go to events happening in your area and start meeting new people with similar interests. Maybe they have a club at your husband’s/wife’s work where they organise get togethers. If not, you could start organising some yourself. You could also join a Facebook community to learn about get togethers, events that you can visit. I am a member of many expat groups, as we live in a foreign country the moment, there is a spouse club at my husband’s workplace that I am a member of and we have many get togethers there.
Learn a new dance. I love social dancing. Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting you to clubs and dance there. Social dancing is very different to what people do in night clubs (possibly drunkenly moving to loud techno music at all hours of the night in a dimly lit confined space.) When you start to do social dancing, whether it be Salsa, Kizomba, Bachata or Tango, you’ll meet many new interesting people and you’ll find yourself in a very friendly community. And you’ll feel great once you grasp the basics of the dance. Most bigger towns have social dancing with lessons for beginners, just have a look on Facebook!
Do you have a skill that you could share with others? It could be a foreign language, sawing, math, or anything you’re very good at. You could start teaching someone who wants to learn one of these skills at your home.