Editor’s note: What activities and practices have gotten us through the pandemic? What have we learned about ourselves during this dismal time? Baltimore Watchdog reporters wrote personal essays and interviewed people on this topic. Here’s what they found.
By Taylor Stronsky
Kristen Hoover is like many of us: She typically doesn’t worry about organizing something unless she can see it. Closets with doors? Not her first priority. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, Hoover became more interesting in cleaning everywhere and everything.
Hoover was working in the restaurant industry last March when COVID-19 forced shutdowns.
“I was scared and unsure if I would have a job,” she said.
Turns out, she’d end up working more hours than before doing carry out orders. But on her days off, she no longer had plans. She used that free time to organize her home.
Her organizing routine usually started with deciding on a project to clean, whether it be the kitchen, bedroom or pantry. Then she grabbed her phone and turned on one of her favorite podcasts — The Daily, Joe Rogan or a dating/relationship show.
Hoover’s biggest accomplishment? Her bedroom. Every year she turns all the clothes hanging in the closet backwards so that the point of the hanger is facing forward. When she wears an item of clothing throughout the year, when she puts it away she turns the hanger back the normal hanging position. After a year she can easily see what she didn’t wear all year and donate it.
“I would just force myself to do one project a week,” she said. “If I wanted to do more I would, but if I didn’t I wasn’t worried about it.”
In addition to cleaning out her closet, she went through the rest of her clothes that go in her dresser and refolded them Marie Kondo style. She learned this style from Kondo’s Netflix show “Tidying up,” among other places. This style consists of laying clothing out flat and taking outer parts of the clothing and folding it in repeatedly, until you get the smallest form of folding. This style of folding also changes how it lays in the drawer. Instead of laying it down, it gets sat up vertically so it’s easier to see and pull out.
Hoover considers her projects to be relatively small in scope. The largest project she has done so far is her pantry. She pulled everything out, checked expiration dates and thought of a new system to put everything back in. She wanted a system that made sense to her. For example, she bought clear containers with labels for her to put her dry items in like flour and sugar.
One of Hoover’s daily cleans is her kitchen. She likes the sink empty and the counters clean.
“The only thing that triggers the neat freak in me is if there are crumbs on the floor,” she said.
She enjoyed the feeling of having a clean and organized house, but the process isn’t necessarily fun for her. Once she isn’t stuck at home as much, she doesn’t plan on having to organize as often.
Hoover said there is always something to clean or organize. These projects especially helped her keep her mind off of what was going on in the world.
“It helped by giving me something to do besides watch TV,” she said. “Afterwards I had a sense of accomplishment that made me feel good.”
By Madison Disney
I have always been a very organized person. Whether it’s filing assignments into folders so my desktop looks cleaner, sorting my clothes by color or finding new ways to incorporate decor and storage in my living room, I’ve found that I am calmest when I can clean something. If everything has a place and is accessible in the neatest way possible, I feel the most accomplished and at ease with my living space. But I don’t always have the time to make my space look the way I want.
Before the pandemic, I was learning to be OK with the fact that I would not always have the time to clean my apartment or add decorative details to a room or light a candle anytime I wanted. Now that I have been stuck at home, I have more time to look at spaces in my apartment to see what I want to clean or redecorate. Being able to see almost every room in the place has been a challenge for me. Since moving in, the decor has slowly become more cohesive, but I still find myself looking over at our study room and mentally planning what can be moved where to make the room feel homier and more welcoming since it is one of the first areas you see when you walk into the apartment.
I often find myself spontaneously springing up from the couch to rearrange furniture, dust surfaces or just reorganize shelves so that things can feel more orderly. Since the start of the pandemic, I found more enjoyment doing things like this more than ever. I want to feel the most comfort in seeing my apartment as possible, and this to me is the best thing to do to help that process.
Once a day, usually before bed, I take a few minutes to straighten up the common areas. Since I live with two other people, cooking, doing crafts, working on schoolwork, doing laundry, etc., can leave a messy trail behind even though we are all always at home. But we all have a mutual agreement to save cleaning up for the end of our day. Starting in the living room, I fluff the pillows on the couch and refold the throw blankets, then shift to the “collect all” space, our dining room table and organize the scattered school supplies, mail and leftover Starbucks cups. Then, finally I move on to the most time-consuming but most satisfying room to clean up: the kitchen.
I hate dishes, but I hate staring at a sink full of them more. Before COVID-19, I would usually spend most of my time out of the house and come home to a mess that almost always stressed me out. Even if the mess wasn’t mine, I still felt the need to clean it. Never having the time to keep up with the chaos at home was always something I wished I had more time for. Now, I can take the time in my day to listen to a YouTube video, wipe down the counters, take care of the dishes and reward myself with a snack afterwards to feel more productive even though I now spend more time at home.
Every night by starting this process, I start to feel calmer knowing that the space will be in order, and the chaos I felt from the mess will finally subside. Once I finish cleaning a room, I subconsciously find myself standing back and looking at the work I’ve done before walking out and moving onto the next.
Thanks to TikTok, I have also found more organization and cleaning life hacks. I once spent more than two hours scrolling through videos of people speed cleaning their bathrooms without realizing how long I had been sucked into them. My feed has become a combination of content for a busy mom with two kids and a struggling college student with the simplest humor.
Even though I take the time every night to clean my space, I find myself wandering around my apartment finding mini projects I want to complete. I once spent an hour reorganizing my closet because I was bored and thought it needed a change. I was trying to look for a pair of shoes and noticed that there was a much more efficient way to organize my things in such a small space. So I started gutting my closet and threw everything in a heaping pile on the floor. Shoes, clothes, bags, bins — it felt like opening the door of a clown car. It always helps me to see what I’m working with before putting anything back, so I started mentally drawing out a plan to see what would work the best in the space that I had. Almost half of the “Hamilton” soundtrack later I finally felt like I could get to everything I needed to without creating more of a mess.
Most people I know find cleaning stressful and a chore, but I love it so much I find myself organizing my friend’s desks or closets. To me, mess = stress. I do not get overwhelmed by the thought of cleaning my room.
Although I have more time at home, I have found that I am more stressed. For the past year, finding ways to make myself feel relaxed has been a challenge when I can’t do things that would normally help. So finding new and fun ways to make cleaning more relaxing has been my focus through quarantine. Even if I am feeling lazy or unmotivated, watching a YouTube video of someone else cleaning helps me get more motivated to start. I have also learned to adapt to stress by finding ways to make my environment more organized. It doesn’t have to be cleaning, it can be making a schedule of my classes, work shifts, and times for at home activities/tasks, or coming up with a loose mental routine that keeps me sane when my physical environment can’t really change right now.
When school becomes overwhelming and I feel like I have tons to do in one day, or even one week, starting my day by making my bed and making (sometimes buying) Dunkin Donuts coffee can instantly put me in a positive and energetic mood. Super simple things like this put me on the track to become more productive in things that would normally stress me out more.
I always feel the most productive when the whole place is clean and candles are lit. Finally sitting down with a freshly washed blanket while my favorite Cedar Magnolia candle burning is one of the simplest things I now look forward to.
Giving myself the time to do something enjoyable for myself has taught me how to balance my time more once COVID-19 is over. I have also taught myself how to keep a house tidy, which was often a skill that got lost once a semester kicked into full gear. So since the pandemic, I have been working to master it. A busy lifestyle doesn’t mean I have to give up something I love that also calms me down. I’ve learned that there is always time for that, even if it’s the smallest, simplest thing. The chaos of my everyday life doesn’t have to follow me home, and the escape of stress and overwhelming amounts of responsibilities should be something I prioritize more.
By Taylor Stronsky
Have you ever just looked at a room and seen its potential? Perhaps you knew exactly what you wanted but there was just no way you felt you could accomplish it? I’ve had that feeling — but this time around, I accomplished it. I can officially say I had a vision for a room, and made that vision happen, thanks to boredom during COVID-19.
Let me start with the basics. I’m a student at Towson University. Before COVID I was also a bartender and dance teacher. Last spring, I was looking forward to a huge weekend of business with St. Patrick’s Day. But with the shutdown, all of those things came to a halt.
I had school to preoccupy me for a bit, but going from a full-time student and two part-time jobs to just online classes….let’s just say I had way too much time on my hands.
There was a room in my basement that screamed “that’s so 70’s” — and that is not an exaggeration. There was a white tile drop sealing, a thin, dark wood paneling that covered the walls, and long bulb florescent lights with thick plastic covering them. It was enough to make any homeowner cringe.
I finally looked at my fiancé and said, “I’m tearing this room apart and you are going to help me.” We demolished the entire room. That way we got to start from scratch. Thankfully, he is well versed in carpentry so he knew how to hang drywall, spackle, sand and paint. Unfortunately, he was an essential worker at the time, so he taught me and I finished the rest of the work.
After the painting is when the fun began for me. The first thing to start with is the color on the walls. It is the fundamental beginning to interior decorating. I stuck with a neutral color of grey, and then I got to pick out flooring, which was dark brown wood. From there I just started piecing together different styles that I liked.
If I could give my style a name, it would be close to boho chic. I like the way plants and neutral colors can make you feel calm, but I also like the lavish accent of gold, glass and marble.
Eventually over a couple of months I was able to have the room I had imagined in my head. I think the most memorable part in this whole project was when the walls were sanded and you could finally see the dimension of the room. I finally saw my project coming to life in that moment.
Ironically if it wasn’t for COVID I would have never taken the leap to take on the project myself. There is something very gratifying in standing back and admiring the finish project you and your significant other worked so hard on. I was able to learn so many knew things by being stuck inside that I probably would have never had a chance to do.