This post contains affiliate links. I will receive a small percentage of sales.
I have lost count and have no clue as to how many days we have been home. The one the thing that I do know for sure is that we have been making the most of this time together. I also know that boredom can be brutal so I have made it my mission to come up with creative ideas to keep us entertained. My husband called me crazy, but in a fun way. I’ve also learned many things while on this journey. I thought I would share some boredom busters with you and I’d love to hear about what you have been doing to keep this stressful time less stressful.
Boredom Busters:
1. Since we started this crazy journey in March I knew we would be spending time indoors, and my teens still had Amazon gift cards to spend. We started with a portable ping pong set! You can take it anywhere so I know will be using it when we camp and on vacation as well. It retracts and easily comes on and off the table. Best purchase ever! Then we moved on to a dart board. Since I didn’t want to spend a fortune or ruin my walls we bought a soft tip board. It does the job. Now that leads me to my next boredom buster.
2. Theme night! We have been having theme nights since the kids were young, but as they grew the nights kind of faded away. Since we had ping pong and a dart board, we had seedy bar night! I know, I know, but you have to keep the teens entertained too. We ate pizza and apps standing up playing games and listening to rock music on a record player. I decorated with some record albums and old posters I found in the attic. I made the kids wear black rock t-shirts. We really had a blast!
3. Movie night! Yes, I’m sure you are thinking that every night is movie night, but that’s not true. We have been taking advantage of LionsGateLive which has been streaming LIVE movies on YouTube Friday nights. We’ve been popping popcorn, pulling out movie style candy, and sitting in the dark. Don’t tell anyone, but my husband and I snuck in some wine! Shhh!
4. You can go on a date. My husband surprised me by asking me out on a lunch date. Since we have teens we left them home, but you can still have a family date if you have littles. He ordered us my favorite hot dogs and drove me down by the river. It was raining, but we sat in the car and enjoyed the view. It was nice.
5. I knew that we would have some sunny days so, I ordered us a volleyball net. We had one, but it broke. I still had all the badminton rackets and such. We suck at volleyball, but we still try. It gets them outdoors with a purpose.
6. We celebrated events that didn’t happen. Everyone has had something cancelled this year. We have had plenty. I wanted to mark some of those milestones. My son was going to Nepal for Spring Break and it was postponed till next year. We honored the trip by hanging prayer flags outside out the house and my husband and I cooked a Nepalese meal in his honor. It helped.
7. We are cooking and baking. Okay, so it’s mostly me, but I love when we cook together. We have made bread, pasta, pizza, and tried so many new recipes. It has been keeping thing exciting and I have added many new things to my list of go to meals. Plus, we are eating better.
8. Check out what is available locally. Many businesses are being creative and I love that we can support them in our own small way. We have been ordering out once a week and buying supplies from local farms, butchers, etc…. We even did a wine tasting events online with a local winery!
9. Puzzles. Did I say puzzles? Lucky for me that someone had dropped off a ton of puzzles at the library for free before this whole mess began. I grabbed a few thinking it would be a great family activity. Well, we are on puzzle number 4 now. Honestly we all started, but the husband and my youngest dropped out. It’s mostly my 16 year-old and me. Okay, it really is him and I get a piece here and there. Any way he said he finds it relaxing to put his headphones on and work on it. Score!
10. Take a family photo! We never take one unless we are on vacation or someone takes it for us. I purchased a tripod for my phone that came with a remote. This mom had big plans of filming videos for my blog, but I never quite made that happen. We had fun taking this picture at Easter. The bloopers are hysterical.
Thanks for this! We’ve been considering getting a ping pong table. This might be the nudge I need.
I just bought the same ping pong set, but thought our dining room table wouldn’t be long enough – but yours seems the same size, so I guess I will try!
It’s harder , I think having only one. Our son is 18, had to come home from freshman year in march to leave his first year of dorm life to live with his boring old parents! Now that he’s done with finals, I need to find a way to establish that we need to create more fun family time, other than meals. It’s far too easy for him to be in his room, zooming with his college buds and playing online games!
Love these ideas <3