Staying at home to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 has caused many people’s daily lives to fade into a distant memory. For the younger generation, facing exam cancellations, inability to see friends and family, and the tough adjustment to online learning, finding inspiration and positivity in everyday life has become a struggle as the days roll into one. I decided to explore creative ways in which families across the globe are coping- and share some of my own ideas for keeping occupied.
As I scroll listlessly through Instagram for the fifth time today, a quote catches my eye. ‘Just a daily reminder that quarantine is not a productivity test’, it reads. This resonates with me greatly; now that our days are anything but occupied, and with no end in sight as the UK situation remains unstable, it’s all too easy to panic over the mountain of things you feel like you ‘should’ be doing. Spare time, something which neither schoolchildren nor working adults have ever had much of, is suddenly in abundance. The pressure was there from the start. Time to learn Chinese! Time to start going for 5k runs on the daily! If only...
But this simply isn’t realistic, and isn’t helped by many YouTube stars filming their daily lives on lockdown, which although on one hand can provide creative ideas and inspiration, can also increase pressure and set unrealistic expectations of how to spend your days. Looking to others’ daily routines for motivation is hard to avoid, but could definitely have adverse effects on your mental health. However, the internet can be a fascinating source of inspiration for lockdown activities for all ages. Websites such as FutureLearn offer free courses from acclaimed universities, on all things from creative writing to nutrition. You can learn to code with Python on SoloLearn, visit Google’s arts and culture collection to delve into museums around the globe, virtually tour national parks in America, use Audible to listen to audiobooks, use the website Upcycle That to find ideas giving new life to old clothes, and explore our planet with a Google Earth. For languages, reading the news on foreign news websites is really effective to keep up your skills- e.g. BBC News Mundo (Spanish), France 24 and Le Monde des ados (French) and Tagesschau (German). Even watching a series or film in a foreign language, although challenging, is super fun to do. And there are endless documentaries and series on BBC iPlayer and Netflix! Revisiting old favourites or enjoying a movie night with the family is also great fun.
Keeping fit while staying at home may appear to be a challenge, but social media and the internet, yet again, offers numerous solutions. Joe Wicks’ weekday ‘PE with Joe’ is a fun, ideal replacement for lost hours of school sport, and YouTube offers all kinds of workouts, even for seniors, and ones for the whole family to participate in. That said, dancing around the kitchen to your favourite playlist is an equally fun pastime! On social media such as Instagram, accounts such as Live Stream Arts Fitness post daily timetables for those interested in dance, workouts and musical theatre. They compile a list every day of Instagram accounts going live and running classes suchas jazz, ballet, yoga, singing, contemporary, and more- all for free! The Dutch National Ballet Academy upload daily ballet barre classes on YouTube, as well as the English National Ballet. For ballet, yoga and pilates lovers, I would also recommend Kathryn Morgan’s channel, which has brilliant workouts. While I initially felt daunted at the beginning of lockdown, being unable to attend tennis sessions and ballet classes and worrying about the drudgery of forcing myself to work out daily simply to ‘keep fit’, I now see there are a huge number of amazing alternatives- after all, keeping healthy should be fun too!
Other activities (despite the nationwide flour scarcity) such as baking are also immensely rewarding. However, for some families this is a greater undertaking than others- take the Berliner Sechslinge (in English: Berlin sextuplets) for example. This Polish family, living in Germany, have eight children in total! You can only imagine the chaos accompanying days on end spent at home... On their YouTube channel, they have been vlogging their daily life in lockdown, including one video where the family bake cookies together. Elsewhere, in France, 13-year old Violette, who has been writing about her daily life in lockdown on French news website ‘Le monde des ados’, says she enjoys baking and making crêpes, and also made a cake to celebrate her dad’s birthday. In her journal she also enthuses about making TikToks with her sister- something which many young people enjoy. In the UK, the app’s popularity has surged since the start of lockdown. One in three Brits have installed TikTok on their devices, and during the week of 23rd March when lockdown was announced, installations increased by 34%. The platform is home to creative, humorous, and ingenious content, from dance challenges to comedy skits. As the Guardian puts it, the app is ‘the perfect fit for lockdown, when many of us are stuck inside and in desperate need of some silly fun’. Why not give it a try with some of your family?
As the NHS and health workers worldwide battle to save lives, staying at home and respecting the guidelines couldn’t be more vital. Doing our bit isn’t always easy, but keeping boredom at bay is definitely possible. However long the situation lasts, thanks to the resources we have today, like the internet and social media, there will always be creative new ideas to embrace.
By Caroline Young
