As soon as the school year starts, you immediately start longing for the summer. You long for the unlimited free time without the burden of waking up early for school and completing endless hours of homework each night. You tell yourself, “this summer is gonna be my time to shine!”… Or so you thought. Let me guess, now that summer is here, you have no idea what to do with all of this free time. Your summer plans are not working out and so you resort to scrolling endlessly and switching from one app to another. Over time, your bed and the phone in your hand get too comfortable and you lose all motivation to do anything, and you enter an endless cycle of boredom.
While being in bed on your phone all day may seem like the easiest pastime, there is so much else that you can be doing with your valuable summer free time. If you’re asking, “Well, what else can I be doing?”, then you came to the right place! Here are 6 things you can do in the summer instead of being on your phone.
1. Organize your life
After a long tiring school year, full of work and late study nights and early mornings, it’s likely that you haven’t had time to declutter and organize everything. Take at least one day to organize your closet, your desks, and throw away or donate things you don’t need. And if you want, take a couple extra hours to delete and organize some photos on your phone or your school documents on your laptop. This will make you feel more motivated and ready for what’s to come!
2. Reconnect with people from your past
We all have childhood friends we no longer talk to, or a friend we drifted away from for whatever reason. Summer is the perfect time to reconnect with those people. Give them a call, see what they’re up to, and reminisce about the memories you have shared. You may even be lucky enough to make some new ones to reminisce about later.
3. Spend time with family
Throughout the school year, you have probably been way too busy with school to actually spend quality time with your family, even if you live under the same roof and see them all the time. Get to know your annoying siblings better, you may find out they’re not actually as annoying as you thought!
4. Go shopping
Find yourself a new outfit. Buy clothes you know you will wear all the time, or clothes that are too extravagant and colorful but a little part of you is convinced you will wear it (you probably won’t). You can also just not buy anything at all! Try on fancy dresses and pretend you are a celebrity shopping for your next award show red carpet. Or a wedding dress that extends miles behind you. The choices are really endless. Retail therapy is the best type of therapy. Dare I say more?
5. Start a journal
If you’re anything like me, you probably have a bunch of pretty notebooks lying around that you’re scared to use. This is their time to be used! You can start a journal for literally anything you want: a book journal where you track your reads, a bullet journal to keep you productive, a movie or tv show journal, even just a diary or scrapbook to store all your memories and thoughts and keep them safe and sound.
6. Spend time doing what you love
For most of us, our year consists of early nights and late mornings, with no time to put into our hobbies and interests. Whether you love to read, write, paint, play an instrument, exercise or play a sport, summer is the time to revisit those hobbies and reignite the passion you had for them.