If the Coronavirus quarantine, self-isolation taught me anything it is that I am incredibly spoiled, or at the very least, incredibly privileged. Here’s 10 reasons why:

  1. I never really had to clean dishes, as we had a nanny/cleaning person in our house almost every day prior to the lockdown…cleaning dishes 1-2-3 times a day is daunting.
  2. I never really had to do laundry, although I really love cleaning and cooking, and laundry, doing the tasks everyday gets super cumbersome, and I quickly run out of ideas…
  3. My kids’ school is great, even if there is something to complain about, as a society we’ve gotten so used to farming out our children’s education, that being tasked with this during this time, is very difficult. 
  4. I never appreciated how smart some designs of household items are and the thought that goes into designing things for simplicity, or how stupidly somethings are designed. For example, and this is an observation that my spoiled self is deciding to pick on, Tupperware that has a lip holds water, and even after a cycle through the dishwasher with heat feature, retains water, and requires more work to put back on the shelf dry. 
  5. I have a dishwasher, and laundry machines in my home, so even if the work is difficult per points 1-4, well I actually have these machines onsite, so how spoiled am I?
  6. Having children and needed to look after them for up to 14 hours a day (somehow they get up at 6-7 am and won’t go to sleep until after 9 no matter how hard I try) can really teach you a thing or two about how you look as an adult. Hear me out, what I mean is that when I get in a bad mood, because that happens, and I lash out at something really petty, and my 4 year old daughter tells me to take a breath, and sit down and puts her hand around my shoulder and tells me everything is going to be alright, means 1 of 2 things, either my wife and I did something right as a parent, or I am acting like less than a 4 year old. 
  7. Plasticine sucks, and although it bought me about 5 days of entertainment, the fallout isn’t worth it. Once the art projects are complete, the kids will take them apart and roll tiny balls of it, and it ends up everywhere. Think glitter, that gets stuck in everything, and cannot be vacuumed. Although glitter is really bad, (we’ve learned our lesson the hard way), plasticine is also bad, just in a different way. 
  8. I never really appreciated how hoard my wife works preparing for her classes. She is a teacher and had to pivot quite dramatically to teach her high school classes online. 
  9. Dressing every day is something I take for granted, and dressing my kids every day, I take even more for granted…basically pajamas all day…oy.
  10. My back hurts.