Trying to make the days more interesting when every day is the same

Some lyrics which perfectly encapsulate my mood right now:

"I'm bored of being bored, I'm tired of being tired" - My Little Empire by the Manic Street Preachers.

At the moment we are stuck in a loop. Every day feels the same, and seems to go by so quickly. I can't relax until the children are settled in bed, which comes later and later. All of us are feeling a bit down and fed up, and we just seem to amplify that among ourselves.

So I've been trying to think of ways that I can do to make the days more interesting for all of us. Hopefully by keeping on top of my own mental health I'll have the strength to bring up everyone's mood a little bit.

Cutting down social media

I have been getting sucked into social media, especially Twitter, and using it as a way to pass time despite my anxiety rising with every tweet I read. As well as avoiding it I've been cutting down the people that I follow - 'friends' on Facebook that I've never met and accounts on Twitter that I only followed because they followed me. This makes my social media a more interesting and personal place to be.

Reading

I've replaced the majority of this previously wasted social media time with reading, and I've found some excellent reading material recently. I've taken note of recommended books from blog posts and social media and reserved them for free to pick up from the library. I'm also using two ways to find free and cheap Kindle books which I'll share below in case you don't know about them and are interested:

Amazon Prime Reading as I understand it ( and please do correct me if I'm wrong!) Prime members can borrow up to ten books at a time from a selection of books that updates once a month or so. Once you've read a book you return it, and the books, will stay on your Kindle for as long as you have a Prime membership even if they are removed from the selection available. 

Top Kindle Books 

The Top 100 Paid tab will bring up popular books and bestsellers that are currently on special offer for 99p. And I can usually find something that I like the look of in the Top 100 Free section. You do need to be a bit careful with the free ones, sometimes they are just short stories and sometimes the books are the first in a series and liable to end on a cliff hanger to encourage you to buy the next one.

Exercise

I started a regular exercise routine in September and I'm really pleased that I've kept it going. Unfortunately my main form of exercise was running, and with the children at home I can't get out for a run in the day and it's too dark and cold first thing. I've been working through the Joe Wicks back catalogue and trying a different video each time. We've also ordered a decent cross trainer for exercising at home. I want to find some more fun exercise videos to try as well. I'm thinking about trying this dance one tomorrow although I know I'll be terrible at it!

Baking and cooking

Before Covid I used to regularly pop to the supermarket and only planned meals a few days in advance. Although we often ate the same meals, it was easier to cook something that I was in the mood to eat. Now that we shop less often, I need to meal plan much more efficiently and be more rigid. I'm determined to get a bit more inventive with our dinner options, there is plenty of inspiration online. I also enjoy baking and it's a good activity to do with the children, with the bonus of a tasty treat at the end of it. I want to make dinner something to look forward to!

Playing board games

I've found that (like most people) the children don't cope well when they are on a screen all day. It can't be helped when most of their learning is online, but I've been trying to set aside their longer lunch break to play some quick games together. We enjoy Maponimoes, Charades, Guess Who, and yesterday we even had a game of Elefun. Just trying to enjoy something together. 

Embracing my longer afternoons

When the children are at home I gain an hour and a half in my day. They often finish their schoolwork by three, and if they are happy to entertain themselves after that then I have a couple of hours until I start making dinner. I'm trying to use that time to do something useful - get some work done if I have some, do some housework, write a blog post, or just sit down for a bit with a book. 

Generally I feel much happier about my day if I feel that I've done something productive, even if it's just a happier child, a tidier house, some work done, an interesting chapter of a book read or a blog post published. So I'm really trying to make sure that I achieve something interesting every day!