5 Things I’m Going to Miss About Being in Confinement

When Macron announced the lock-down on the 17th March, I didn’t think we would still be here on the 10th of May. At the beginning, it was really hard, even if we knew that staying home was the right thing to do. Getting used to working from home, not being able to go out, or see friends, or see family, was extremely tough. And if you had told me that there would be things I would miss about confinement, I would never have believed you. But here we are. Tomorrow we begin the process of de-confinement and will gradually be able to get back to living life normally. We hope anyway.

Confinement has taught me a great deal over these past 8 weeks. It reminded me how grateful we should be for our health, our friends, our loved ones, and of course, our freedom. We took everything for granted and I hope we never do that again.

So here are 5 things that I’m genuinely going to miss about my confinement life. I hope you enjoy this post and who knows, maybe you will even miss some of the same things that I will.

1. Working from home 

Although I hated it for the first couple of weeks, I’ve got into a great rhythm working from home now. Although I miss my colleagues dearly and can’t wait to see them again, I have to admit that I’ll miss my street-facing, make-shift desk in our bedroom. I will miss:

• watching the people at the bakery and my neighbours who argue every day about the pigeons that keep invading their balcony;
• waking up late and only needing 15 minutes to get ready and “get” to work;
• having time to make breakfast; and
• having time to have a coffee with my Frenchman.

I will just miss the ease of it all. Luckily, my company isn’t making us go back immediately, but eventually, I will be sad to leave my little working from home life behind.

2. Not washing my hair

This might sound strange, but for years I’ve tried to wash my hair less. I wanted it to be in better condition but I always had to wash it every other day. Over the last 8 weeks I have slowly trained my hair into not needing to be washed as much. I have actually only been washing it twice a week, something that would have been unthinkable before. My hair has got SO much thicker and is in such better condition than before confinement. I will try to keep this confinement habit, because it has made such a positive difference!

3. Speaking more with my friends and family 

I won’t lie. Pre-confinement I was what you would call an extreme social butterfly. Constantly out and about with friends, at dinners or having drinks. I neglected a lot of my friends abroad and I didn’t call my sister half as much as I should have. Confinement has really changed that, and for the better. My sister and I have spoken every week on the phone and almost every day via Whatsapp. I have been helping my mum with her French, talking to my dad for ages about music and France (our favourite pastimes) and have spoken to my grandparents every single week. There’s nothing like a life-threatening virus to make you realise that maybe, your priorities weren’t always in order. In any case, I’m grateful that our relationships have been strengthened, despite the difficult circumstances.

4. Having so much time to cook (and learn to cook)!

I have always been an okay baker but cooking was never really my thing, until now that is. A mixture of confinement boredom and with the help of the wonderful HelloFresh initiative, I have finally learnt how to cook some delicious meals. I always thought that cooking was such an effort, that you needed so much time to make something worthwhile, but it’s not true. You need time at first, but ultimately, you just need to be patient and start small. It is possible to make delicious, healthy meals quickly, if you just have some basic ingredients in your placard. (p.s. this post is not sponsored, I just love HelloFresh). 

5. Spending time with my Frenchman

I joke with my friends that the main reason my relationship works so well is because we are both such independent people. This is not really a joke. He has his life, I have mine and then we have our shared life. So you can imagine that I was quite nervous about the confinement. Going into an unspecified amount of time with my Frenchman in our 40 sqm apartment. Oh dear. Worst of all, we were supposed to be in Japan during this time. So picture two people, down in the dumps, stuck in a tiny apartment instead of being in Japan. To my surprise and delight, confinement has actually made our relationship stronger. It confirmed that we are two pieces of the same, weird bilingual puzzle and we wouldn’t be who we are today without each other.

And I mean, if you can survive 8 weeks of confinement in a small apartment, surely you’re ready to take on just about anything?

Thanks for reading! Au revoir confinement! You’ll be (strangely) missed and we will never forget you, that’s for sure.