Six months of staying at home. Life under quarantine.

It’s Monday, day 178. For the last 6 months, I keep a daily journal of our lives under quarantine.

It’s been 6 months since we went to the mall. It’s been 6 months since we went to work. It’s been 6 months since our kids went to school. It’s been 6 months since we see our friends and families.

For 6 months, other than going to the doctor’s office, we stayed at home.

This is a story of how one family chose to cope with the pandemic. I wrote about our first 30 days in quarantine. Nothing drastic happened in the days since. I just never would have thought this way of living would last so long.

At the household level, we continued to shop online. Even as Virginia went into phase 3 reopening at the beginning of July, we chose to continue grocery shopping online. After the first 2 months, many more options have opened up. In the first few weeks of the pandemic, we shopped at the big grocery store, then we started ordering fruits and vegetables from a couple of local farms. We later discovered butchers who would deliver packaged meat. My wife discovered many Chinese grocery stores, including some from New York, were organizing deliveries.

We now have on average 2–3 deliveries a week. The variety and selection of groceries may be better than before. The…