Next level cocooning during lockdown; here's how to do it

My plan was to give you all sorts of unsolicited advice on how to make things as easy as possible for yourself during lockdown. Only I just dropped all the grated cheese from my sandwich because I was craving a toastie, so I'm not entirely sure I'm the right person for this. Or maybe I am, that could also be.

I mainly hope you didn't have grand plans or that you can easily postpone them. In the meantime, my plan is to cocoon for these two weeks. I do this quite often, but I just never call it that. The word is normally quite allergic to me, but if we can't do anything, then my plan is to go all out this time.

1. Go outside
It sounds a bit in conflict with Rutte's stay-at-home advice, but it's actually important to be in nature for at least twenty minutes. This already helps to restore the brain.

2. Music
Are you unconsciously a bit distracted by the radio? Play a relaxing playlist over your speakers. Just make sure it's one that allows you to daydream a bit. Nothing wrong with dancing around the living room, but we want a relaxed state of mind.

3. Comfortable food
Drink that healing tea, I really relax with all the flavors from Yogi. Open a phenomenal red wine by the fireplace on the weekend (candles suffice in the absence of a fireplace) and definitely do this accompanied by at least three delicious cheeses. The rest of the week, cook well but healthily for yourself, and the condition is that it all tastes good.

4. Pampering
Lather yourself from head to toe with oil, provide your face with a mask daily, and in the meantime, fill the room with a calming room spray. Your home should smell like you've just walked into a spa where you have to dry off in a bathrobe from all the creams.

5. Take it easy
Your home should feel like a kind of retreat. Therefore, it can be a bit more cuddly. Soft blankets, round cushions, warm fabrics, fluffy house socks, and lots of plants and flowers, because they
have a calming effect, says mooiwatplantendoen.nl.

6. Be zen
Yoga, meditation, breathing exercises, do the whole shebang. Take a quarter of an hour for breathing exercises, a quarter of an hour for meditation, and half an hour for yin yoga. With an hour a day, you're already taking care of yourself.

7. Watch a movie
Check Netflix, look at Videoland, check Pathé, or watch on Prime. Watching a movie under a blanket on the couch is the ultimate cocooning, but it has to be a good one.

8. Keep the curtains closed for one day
Just pretend you're not home, delightful.

9. Plan your free time
Before you know it, you're working overtime again, and you weren't supposed to do that these two weeks. Think broadly about when you'll do what. An hour of zen in the morning, then work, an hour of cooking and eating in the evening, then an hour of pampering, and then drying off in a bathrobe for TV. Great planning, right?

See you in two weeks.