Essential Products for Staying Home in the New Year

I don’t know about you, but 2020 was the year I realized exactly what I needed in my life. Among learning which relationships, and habits, truly mattered, I also found which essential products for staying home made life easier. With the pandemic around, my husband and I took to doing more things around the house that we used to frequently rely on others for. In this article, you’ll find the items I felt I couldn’t have gotten through last year without, and am absolutely going to continue being grateful for in the New Year. 

Must-Have Household Items for Stay at Home Orders

Food Subscription Service To Cook At Home

No lie, Spencer and I are known for eating out a lot. I also didn’t grow up learning a lot of cooking skills. When stay-at-home orders happened, I felt a little out of my depth when it came to making food at home. Besides supporting local establishments and ordering takeout, I knew we had to get cooking! Getting a food subscription service (we used Hello Fresh) that delivered ingredients and recipes to our door was the perfect way to get comfortable making our own meals. I credit them for easing my kitchen anxiety and helping me wade through learning cooking skills. It was the perfect jumping board to become pseudo-chefs. If you’re not into cooking, or looking for a healthier alternative, we just started getting pre-made meals from Eat to Evolve. They’re yummy meals delivered weekly, and they also offer many different diet options (such as Keto, Whole 30, and Paleo). It sure beats meal prepping for ourselves!

Two of the kitchen products we can’t live without are the universal oil spouts and the Rub-Away metal bar. The spouts have little rubber stoppers on them that you can insert into cooking oils or alcohol bottles to help pour a more steady and slow stream of liquid. The Rub-Away is a metal “bar of soap” we keep by our sink to use after handling smelly ingredients. Rubbing your hands on the metal causes a painless chemical reaction that takes away any odors on your hands (like onion)!

Show and Movie Streaming Subscription

Of course, did you survive last year without Netflix and Chill? We sorely miss going to the movie theaters, but watched plenty of films and series at home! We’ve probably tried all of the streaming services, but our favorites are Netflix, HBO, Hulu, VH1, and Amazon Prime.

Household Essentials to Make Life At-Home Easier

If you watch my Instagram Stories, you know I love a good cleaning day! It’s one of my favorite ways to zone out and clear my head. We’ve had a Shark vacuum for 5ish years now, and I swear by it. Every single time I use it, it pulls up massive amounts of dust, hair, and debris. It can be used on shag carpet, or wood floors, and has attachments for upholstery and animal hair. To go along with it, I recently got a 10-in-1 steamer mop and can’t stop using it around the house! I’ve used it to mop the floors, to clean stains from carpets and rugs, and to steam iron my clothing. It has a few other attachments I have yet to use, but it’s been worth every penny so far. When I am not using the mop to clean our tile, I deep clean vinyl plank flooring with these tips.

Although this doesn’t help clean the house, I’ve fallen in love with our 7′ antique inspired mirror and use it daily for looking at my outfits and taking OOTD photos! It’s a tad pricey, but I made a blogpost about more affordable options of the Anthropologie mirror (some under $100)!

SHOP THESE PRODUCTS

Fashion and Beauty Essential Products for Staying Home

Skincare to Prevent Mask Acne

When I first started the habit of wearing a mask in public, my skin broke out like crazy! I was getting pimples and whiteheads along my jawline and nose. There are many ways to prevent mask acne (or “maskne” as I call it). However, to get my already-there acne under control, I started using active skincare ingredients religiously. The first is an AHA cleanser by Dermadoctor called Ain’t Misbehavin’ that I wash my face with daily. It’s a subtle acid to help get rid of dead skin cells on the top layer of skin that may be blocking pores. The next product is Differin, which is a retinoid cream highly recommended by dermatologists. You can get it over the counter these days, and I use it about every other day at night. Be sure to follow up with daily sunscreen and moisturizer, or these latter products can do more harm than good.

Comfortable Shoes for Around the House

We live in an apartment with wood floors, which can be both cold and hard on my feet! I invested in some boots (that look like Uggs but are half the price) and some furry slide-on slippers for walking around the house. Not only does it protect my feet, but it helps prevent the spread of germs from outside shoes.

Stretchy Pants For Casual Lounge Days

2020 was the year of loungewear! I definitely found my style a lot more casual this year. Comfortable leggings are a staple, and I love this pair because they can be worn out and about, inside around the house, or even for a workout. They’re the softest pair I own. It’s also no secret that I adore Madewell jeans! I swear by two of their pairs and wear them everywhere. The first are some classic skinnies that I have in 2 sizes and 2 colors! The second is a pair of lived-in mom jeans that are my most sold item of the year.

Gel Nail Manicure Kit

At the beginning of last year I found myself in a pickle because I had gel nails that needed to be removed, but everything had shut down from he pandemic. I took to figuring out how to remove my gel nails at home, which turned out to be very easy! Eventually, I learned to do my own gel manicure at home with a UV light and gel polishes. There is a bit of a learning curve, but each manicure gets easier, and they last without chipping for weeks!

SHOP THESE PRODUCTS

Indispensable Health and Wellness Wares to Get Through the Pandemic

Stay Active at Home With These Quarantine Essentials

Listen, before COVID-19, I was an avid spin studio goer. You could find me in the 45-min club-like exercise environment 2-3 times a week. Once everything closed down, I looked for a way to chase those endorphins at home. After tons of research, I decided on the indoor cycling bike we have now, which I often say is better than some of the spin bikes I’ve ridden in studios! It’s quiet, sturdy, comfortable, adjustable, and most of all, affordable. At first, I was creating my own playlists and exercises. Then, I found out about Aaptiv and have been sold ever since! Aaptiv an app where professional instructors record workout routines with music. There are all kinds of workouts on the app, and you can sort and find by almost any way imaginable. I’d highly recommend these essential products for staying home and getting your fitness on.

Keep Hydration Levels Up

Of course, staying hydrated is nothing new! I did find that my insulated cup helped me drink more water, though! It keeps liquid cold for a long time, especially when ice is added, and there’s a spot for a straw in the lid. I’ve been looking at getting one of those water bottles with marked times on it to remind when to drink water throughout the day, but haven’t taken the plunge on the purchase just yet.

Recover Faster with These Massage Tools

When businesses shut down in the beginning of 2020, I knew I was in for some aches and pains without my monthly massages. As someone who holds a lot of muscle tension and gets migraines from shoulder and neck pain, I highly recommend getting these two essential products for staying home and getting pain relief without a massage.  The first is a high powered massage tool with different head attachments— It’s often recommended by athletes for relieving sore muscles and lactic acid build up. When I am not down for all those vibrations, I use this hard spikey ball on my neck and shoulders to rub out knots. Try using it between you and a hard wall– big results!

Must-Have Items for Staying Home While Being a Blogger or Content Creator

Much-Needed Tools for Photography and Video

Even though life has become more isolated, the show must go on (with my blogging business). This year, I focused mored on being self-reliant for my content creation. That meant taking my own photos in public with tripods (when my husband was unavailable) and my camera, and using essential products for staying home and creating content. I invested in more photography lighting, like my rectangular lights and ring light, for when I was taking photos in my apartment without a lot of natural sunlight. I linked some of my favorite creator tools below!

Quarantine Essential List of Tech Tools

I work a lot of hours on my phone, which drains the battery immensely. I have a charging phone case on my phone (with a pop socket) at all times! My phone battery usually gets to 10% in the early afternoon, and at that point, I just turn on my phone charger case to get an entire phone life back without having to plug it in or stop working! Plus, it keeps my phone safe when I drop it. Along with that, I can’t survive without my Macbook computer and Lightroom/Photoshop Adobe editing software. If you’re a fellow content creator, I highly recommend getting a reliable computer and investing in the Adobe Creative Cloud that is under $20 a month. Here is a round up of the photo editing apps I use for my blog and social media, as well.