Currently, the world is in a state of difficulty, and one of the only solutions we have is for everyone to stay in their homes for the sake of public health. There’s only so much Netflix you can watch before you start crawling up the walls, so here are a couple of creative things you can do it mix it up while you wait this out.

  Purge Your Home

You're home now, so why not spend some time making it feel terrific? I'm sure that there are corners of your house that haven't been touched in years, so now's the perfect time to do a purge and deep clean. 

Go through each area of your house and touch every object that's there. My rule of thumb is that if I haven't used it in the last two years, or I don't have an idea for its use in the next six months, I'll donate it.

Once you've removed everything that isn't useful, rearrange the space to make it feel fresh. Go around the whole house until each area feels useful and exactly how you want it.

Write Appreciation Notes

We're all feeling the burden of isolation right now, and everyone could stand to feel a little extra love. Instead of writing emails or social media messages, switch it up and go old school.

Get a pad of paper and take some time to write a letter to each person in your life you care for. Write down all of the things that you love and appreciate about them. Good memories you have of them, how they make your life better, how special you think they are.

Even if you're not able to mail them right away, just the act of physically writing down beautiful things about others is guaranteed to make you feel better about the world. And once you can mail it, you can bet that it will make those people feel special that you took that time.

Deck of Pain

Want to stay fit even though you're at home? Here's something we've been doing every day; it's called "Deck of Pain." Anyone can do this as long as you have a deck of playing cards.

Since there are four suits in a deck, choose four exercises you want to do that day, e.g., sit-ups, push-ups, squats, and jumping jacks. It's great if you choose four things that target different areas of your body. Assign each exercise to one of the suites.

Flip through the deck of cards one by one, and do the corresponding number of reps and type of movement the card designates. For example, if you choose a 4 of hearts, and the heart suite is sit-ups, you do four sit-ups.

Face cards count as reps of 10, and for Aces, we've been holding Plank for 2 minutes. We change up the movements daily. The whole thing should take about 30 minutes, and by the end, you'll have done about 70 reps of each exercise, and you can feel like a rockstar for staying fit during quarantine! 

Pictionary Telephone

Pictionary Telephone is a game that my friends and I used to play in person, but it can be done remotely. The first person writes down any sentence they feel like. Like, "The iguana ate a giant bug." They send this to the next person in the chain.

The next person quickly draws a picture describing the sentence. It's often hilarious because not everyone is great at drawing. They send the drawing to the next person in line.

The next person writes a sentence describing what the drawing is, and sends it on. Then the next person draws that sentence; then, the next person writes it out, etc. This goes on until it makes it's way back to the original person who wrote the sentence.

The final sequence is then shown to everyone. The results are HILARIOUS and are guaranteed to make you laugh. No time you play it is ever the same, and it's a great way to get your creative juices flowing.

Start Something You've Been Putting Off

We all have that one thing that we keep saying we'd like to do but haven't touched yet. Starting your first novel, taking up beadwork, planning your garden, learning a new dance move, redecorating your living room, wood whittling, learning Spanish… Now is the time people!

It is hard to be forced to be home. So let's find what we can get excited about during this time, instead of just sinking into the couch and watching the 100th episode of that show you're binging.

Not only does creativity reduce stress, but accomplishing goals will help you feel like things are going to be okay, and that there's a future though all this. By using this time to be productive, we'll be that much more prepared to rebuild and support the world around us as soon as we're able to leave our homes again.