Home Wellness: 7 Tips To Improve Mental Health

With people confined to their homes for much of the past two years, it’s no wonder many of us get a little stir crazy. As some people return to work as the pandemic gets under control, many have opted to stay home instead. Working from home allows people the freedom to create their own work schedules and to take care of their families. Whatever the reason for staying home, home wellness is important in this new reality. Read the following seven tips on how to maintain your mental and physical wellbeing while staying at home.

1. Keep Connected

When we spend a lot of time indoors, one obvious drawback is the lack of human contact. If you live alone, this is potentially damaging to your mental health. Zoom meetings and texting aren’t enough. It’s important to have social interaction outside the digital workspace. When staying at home isn’t mandated, of course, get outside, meet your friends, do lunch once a week, or for coffee. When getting out isn’t an option, schedule streaming parties where you and your friends all watch the same movie or sporting event. It’s a great way to connect. Social media is fine too as long as you don’t rely on it as your only form of staying connected.

2. Maintain a Healthy Environment

When spending so much time indoors, maintaining a healthy indoor environment is key to home wellness. Pandemics aside, we already spend the vast majority of our time indoors. Indoor air quality is a concern in the home as well. Use an air purifier to provide clean air to your home or apartment. Use DIY screening kits to test for harmful particles then act on the results to improve IAQ.

Use a Home Wellness Screening Kit to Test For:

• Dust
• Mold
• Radon
• Mycotoxins
• Volatile organic compounds

3. Eat a Healthy Diet

Being stuck inside sometimes leads to harmful habits and eating junk food is one of them. Learn how to cook healthy foods. As we mentioned, the body and mind are linked, so improving our diet leads to better sleep and increased energy levels. When all these things are working, this elevates our mood and contributes to overall home wellness.

4. Stay Mentally Active

Everyone gets anxious and depressed at times. One way to combat anxiety and depression is by staying mentally active. Playing board games with the family or friends is a great way to keep mentally fit. If you’re alone, put together a jigsaw puzzle or work on a crossword puzzle. Learning a new skill or language is another way to stimulate your brain and improve your mood. Doing things such as knitting, painting, drawing, or playing a musical instrument is good for the mind as well.

5. Stay Physically Active

Our bodies and minds are linked, so any improvement you make to one affects the other. The benefits of staying physically active include better sleep and more energy. This is fueled by eating healthy. One thing feeds off another and is important to creating a good home wellness plan. When you can, get outside for a jog, walk, or bike ride. If the weather prevents that, set up a home gym. If you can go to a gym, do so on a regular basis.

6. Practice Mindfulness to Improve Home Wellness

Science shows that being present in every moment benefits our mental health. Meditation, yoga, and other practices improve our state of mind and fight depression while reducing stress and anxiety. The important thing to remember is, there is no right way or wrong way to meditate and be mindful. For some, meditating could take the form of prayer. For others, it may be reciting mantras or just sitting quietly in a comfortable position for a few minutes a day. A little bit of mindfulness can change your outlook on the whole day.

7. Create a Home/Work-Life Balance

We’ve heard a lot about creating a balance between home and work life but this is made more difficult when home and work occupy the same space. Difficult, yes, but not impossible. If you have the space to do so, create a separate workspace away from the TV, the kids, your partner, and any other distractions. Set specific times to work and stick to it. That means not checking email, voicemail, or any productivity apps outside of those hours. Separating the two helps with home wellness.

Create Home Wellness Today

Indoor air quality affects commercial businesses, so it makes sense that it affects home workers too. For more information on how improving IAQ through testing contributes to home wellness, call 727-572-4550.