Spending the Holidays Alone in Your Small Apartment? Cozy Up With Me!
Living Pretty Ep37 // Spending the Holidays Alone in Your Small Apartment? Cozy Up With Me!
If you’re going to be spending the holidays alone this year because of Covid, you’re not alone! This year is… weird. A lot of us are going to be spending Thanksgiving alone next week, and I happen to be an expert on the subject - I spent almost every Thanksgiving solo for 10 years when I lived in NYC and LA. And guess what…? I actually loved it!
In this video, I share my Thanksgiving self care day traditions from all those years of spending the holiday alone. You’ll see that enjoying your own company for some holiday self care actually makes staying home for Thanksgiving feel quite lovely!
If you’re living alone in apartment life, want to see a few solo holiday routines for inspiration, and love some cozy apartment ideas, let’s get comfy and I’ll show you how to enjoy being alone in your apartment for the holidays!
Video Transcript ↓
I’ve made some slight edits in the transcript below so that everything makes more sense in text form. But overall, this is almost a word-for-word dictation of what I say in the video. I’m a much better writer than this, I swear, haha.
'Tis the season, my friends! And this 2020 holiday season is effing weird.
A lot of us are about to spend Thanksgiving alone next week - because of Covid - and I happen to be an expert at being alone on Thanksgiving. So I thought I’d pop in with some words of encouragement during this tricky time.
And if you’re new to my channel, my name is Steffi and I’m the creator of the interior style blog Moda Misfit, and you’re watching Living Pretty, the place for apartment styling tips and small space decor inspiration. So if you’re into that kind of thing, be sure to subscribe and hit that bell to be notified when a new episode goes up every week!
So when you're living in a small apartment - or really any living situation - how are you supposed to create a positive Thanksgiving experience for yourself this year?
Even in a normal year, I think a lot of us have our own distinct relationship with the holidays. For some of us, it's blissfully happy. And for others, it’s often kind of a sad or stressful time of year.
And now we have Covid, which has fundamentally changed the way we’re going to be doing the holidays this year, and a lot of us are going to be alone this Thanksgiving.
So I just wanted to chime in with a reminder that whatever your situation is this year, you deserve every bit of enchantment and whimsy the holiday season has to offer, even if it means you have to stay home alone. If Kevin McCallister could do it, so can we.
The holiday magic is just gonna be a little different this year, and a lot of us are going to have to create that magic by ourselves in our little apartments. And I happen to have a lot of experience doing just that.
Up until I moved back home to Seattle 3 years ago, I spent almost every Thanksgiving for 10 straight years alone. Some of those years were in New York, some were in LA, and none of them were at home with my family.
I spent a couple of those Thanksgivings with friends, which was lovely, and I got invited to plenty of dinners as a Thanksgiving "orphan".
But as I had more and more Thanksgivings alone, by myself, something unexpected happened. I started to... love it.
I even got to the point where I started to decline my friends’ invitations to join their families for Thanksgiving, like a weirdo.
Because without intending to, I ended up creating a Thanksgiving tradition for myself that I started to cherish. And I’m going to share that tradition with you right now. Spoiler alert: it’s very simple.
1. Waking up, blissfully alone
So, Thanksgiving day would start with me waking up in my apartment all alone, because whoever was my roommate at the time had gone back home, like a normal person, for Thanksgiving. And I would just live in the bliss of being alone in my apartment, which was a rarity back then because I had roommates.
So the fact that I would wake up in an empty apartment all by myself on Thanksgiving day was already a big plus for spending Thanksgiving alone. I loved my roommates, but I also really love my alone time.
I want to live the life of a swamp witch who only comes out of her swamp hut if you answer my riddles three.
So you can imagine why it was a big deal for me to have the apartment to myself.
I would get up, make my coffee, and just take in the wonderful silence of an empty apartment. And I would walk around without pants.
2. Binge-watching all day
And really, what I would do from there for pretty much the entire day is just binge a TV show I would pick a show prior to Thanksgiving day, and it would be my Thanksgiving day binge show. I would just plan on having that be my main activity for the day. Just lazy girl heaven.
Probably my favorite show that I've binge watched on Thanksgiving was… I went back a few years ago and watched the O.C. again for the first time since high school. And if you're a millennial girl who went to high school from like 2002 to 2006, you know just how important the O.C. was, whether you liked it or not. I personally loved it because that show had some great music curation, and also some really good soapy fun. So don't hate on the O.C.! That was a good-ass show.
Anyway, if you're going to spend Thanksgiving alone this year, I highly recommend designating a show your Thanksgiving binge show.
Thanksgiving is a perfect day to just be lazy and not feel guilty about it, and also to just focus on some self-care for God's sake, you know?
Think of your Thanksgiving alone this year as your perfect chance to focus on yourself, embrace the silence and the peace of being alone, and embrace the fact that it's a holiday so you might as well just sit back and really focus on making yourself feel good.
3. An wonderfully unimpressive dinner
Now, onto what I would do for Thanksgiving dinner, which is arguably the most important part of Thanksgiving.
So I'm not a cook at all. I can cook like a few things, but you bet your ass I am not going to be cooking Thanksgiving dinner. There is just no way that's ever going to happen, at least not in my tiny apartment. I don't think a turkey would even fit in my little oven in my 42 square foot kitchen.
So I would do something utterly unimpressive for my of Thanksgiving dinner, which would be to go to Whole Paycheck - I mean Whole Foods - and get myself a pre-made turkey and mashed potatoes dinner.
I know that a lot of people would see that is sad, but there was just something about going to Whole Foods - which I didn't really do very often in those days - and not worrying about cooking. It was great!
So I guess my piece of advice when it comes to Thanksgiving dinner - if you're like me and you don't cook but you still want to do something that makes you feel like it's a different kind of dinner for yourself - then try to think about what that dinner could be for you. Whether it's going to a grocery store and picking up something pre-made or maybe making one of your favorite dinners that isn't even Thanksgiving themed.
At the end of the day, it's really just about having a dinner for yourself that may be a little out of the ordinary for you, and treating it like a special night with yourself.
If you're going to be spending Thanksgiving alone or with your significant other this year, I highly recommend you check out this video, in which I give some tips on how to have a romantic dinner date in your apartment.
The tips in there can totally apply to Thanksgiving, whether you're spending it by yourself, with a significant other, or even with a friend or two.
So when dinner time would roll around, I would heat up my pre-made Whole Foods turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy, and then just sit at my desk and continue watching whatever show I was watching that day.
I wouldn't even eat Thanksgiving dinner at a table. I would eat it at my desk. At my computer. So I could keep watching my show.
4. A deliciously uncreative take on a hot toddy
After dinner, the final part of my Thanksgiving tradition would be to simply drink tea spiked with a little brandy. It's like a super uncreative hot toddy.
I would cozy up with my cup of spiked tea and, you guessed it, I would keep watching my show.
So basically, I realize that I just spent a video telling you that my cherished Thanksgiving tradition was to watch TV all day and eat pre-made grocery store food, but I loved it. It was just like one of those simple pleasures type days, and I think that's maybe the mindset that we need to adopt this year. Really enjoying those simple pleasures that come from spending a day alone.
What could have been a depressingly lonely experience, I decided to turn into something that I looked forward to every year. I mean, it was like an introvert’s dream Thanksgiving!
Would I have preferred to spend Thanksgiving with my family? Hell yes. My family is awesome.
But my point in telling you all this is to let you know that, however difficult it may be, it is possible to find the magic in those otherwise lonely times. And you deserve that magic.
And if you need help finding the magic in being alone, comment below and I’ll do my best to show you how!
And if you want daily glimpses into my studio apartment life, follow me on Instagram @moda.misfit. And if you want regular doses of small apartment lifestyle inspiration, then subscribe to this channel and hit the bell to be notified when a new episode goes up every week!
And remember, your apartment - and your Thanksgiving - is destined to be pretty, and you are pretty powerful.
So in order to start reflecting your personality in your interior styling, the first thing I want you to do is just simply write down a bunch of the things that you love. What are your interests, your hobbies? What are your favorite movies, your favorite TV shows? What are your favorite video games? What are the things that really get you going in life?
Just sit down and write them all down in a list. You can even treat this like a journaling exercise, if you're into that kind of thing. I personally am. I'm a sucker for a good introspective journaling session.
You can keep it as simple or as detailed as you want. The point is to really sit down and tap into the things that you love in life.