What To Do at Home When Bored

With recent global events of borders closing, airlines not flying, attractions, nature sites, restaurants and malls shutting their doors, what else is there to do? If you’re a traveler, the prospect of being stuck indoors for an indefinite period of time seems like it’s a nightmare. Even if you’re not a traveler, the prospect of staying indoors without going to a store or doing outdoor activities is scary.

So what can we do in these unprecedented times? Here’s some ideas that I’m hoping to implement in our life which I hope can help other people on what to do at home when bored.

What to do at home when bored:

• Backup old photos
• Write or reminisce about old trips taken
• Create travel plans or itineraries for future trips (already booked or dream trips)
• Decorate or organize your home
• Challenge your mind
  • Build or play with LEGOs
  • Build puzzles (regular or 3D)
  • Wordsearch, Sudoku, and Crossword Puzzles
• Play video games
• Learn a new skill or trade through courses or reading
• Spend more time with your family

Backup Old Photos

Constantly bouncing from place to place before and have no time to organize your thoughts, photos, and video? Well now is the time to actually back up old media you may have in your main computer’s drive or your camera’s SD cards and upload them on the cloud or back up on a separate hard drive. That way, you will have copies of your photos in separate places, and there’s less chance of you losing them.

This actually happened to a lot of our St. Louis photos when the camera’s memory card and our desktop’s hard drive malfunctioned at the same time. This caused us to lose a lot of video and photos from an amazing weekend trip in Missouri. Our back up camera, a mobile phone, was not really utilized much during the trip, so we didn’t have many backups.

Don’t be like us, back up your photos religiously in multiple places.

Write About Old Trips Taken

You can start a travel blog and write about your old trips, but if you already have a blog, then it’s about time you catch up and create posts on old trips you already took. It is a good way to reminisce on previous trips taken (the good old times like of us in Alaska), and gives you endorphins even if you’re at home and not traveling. Looking back on previous travel experiences gives you something to look forward to: more travel, once this ordeal is all over.

This is what we’re currently doing, slowly catching up on some posts based on trips that we have done in an effort to share it to the world, like this trip to Louisville, Kentucky. Even if we can’t physically travel, we can travel using our words and memories!

Create Travel Itineraries for Future Trips

If you have trips booked for later this year or even next year, it’s time to start creating these itineraries! Before my library closed indefinitely, I picked up a few travel guides, mostly Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, and the National Parks.

I’ve mostly read the Disney Cruise Line book and know what to expect when we book our Disney cruise, what entertainment there is onboard, and if they’re friendly to children (they are). Given the price tag of such a trip, it pays to know in advance that there are deals available, and if the cruise is right for us!

No one is stopping you from creating travel itineraries for your future or imagined trips. It doesn’t have to be a trip that’s already booked, you can just start researching based on places that you’ve always wanted to go to. Part of this includes going online, researching, calculating how much it will cost (if paying by cash), or how many points or miles to use (if travel hacking). If going online and reading through various blog posts and lists is overwhelming, you can also pick up a travel book through Amazon or some other retailer online and have it shipped to your front door.

If you wish, you can help support this website by picking up a Kindle copy of our DIY Alaska for Two Weeks guidebook!

Decorate or Organize Your Home

Since we moved to a new house a year ago, we still have a few things that are not organized. That’s one of the projects I plan on tackling during weekends while the baby’s asleep. Once that’s all organized, then it’s time to DIY some shelves and hang them up, hang paintings, photos, and other mementos as well.

You too can take this time to reorganize, design, clean, and decorate your home. It’s easier for us since we own the property we live in, but it may be a bit more difficult if you’re renting, since certain leases do not allow you to hang stuff on the walls.

Purge some areas of the house that you’ve been meaning to clean out. You may find things you have not used in a long time that you can swap out with friends, sell, or donate. Not only will you have a better decorated and organized home, you will probably end up enjoying your stay indoors after all this is over!

Challenge Your Mind

When I was younger, I used to spend so many hours doing word search puzzles. Right now, there’s so many more things that you can do to keep you occupied at home, which doesn’t necessarily involve mindlessly watching TV all the time.

Build LEGOs

If you love toys and have a bit more discretionary income, build LEGOs. I find so much joy in sitting down for a few hours as I build these little masterpieces. They are a bit expensive, but so far I’ve built 2 during this forced time at home, both bought as a birthing present for myself before this whole ordeal. Not only does it help with creativity, it also helps with patience and being detail oriented.

If you have children, involve your children as well in building sets, unless they’re really young and can choke on the pieces. If you’re young at heart, Legos are amazing. It’s one of my favorite toys to play with and collect. The only downside with Legos? They’re a budget buster, so I wouldn’t get too addicted on buying the sets!

Build Puzzles

Puzzles are a new hobby that we took on during this time at home. When calculating the hours spent vs the initial money spent on the puzzle, it is very minimal cost.

Puzzles are a great tool to help develop your brain. It allows you to pay more attention to details, and is also a challenging game that can be done by multiple people. It’s such a shame I only discovered this now, as I could have gone looking for puzzles from thrift shops and garage sales so we won’t have to pay full price for these items.

If you searched now on Amazon, some of the designs I like the most (Disney and travel oriented) are only being sold by third party sellers at a premium. However, if you keep checking daily, a few of them might be available directly from Amazon, Walmart or Target. It may take time to ship but you’ll get it eventually!

I started my puzzle search as soon as the lockdowns were being reinforced so I was lucky enough to get a few of them at fair market value. Beware of buying from third party sellers though!

Wordsearch, Sudoku, Crosswords

Another way to keep your mind sharp is playing with wordsearch, sodoku or crossword puzzles. As a child, I had a lot of time in my hands and word searches were my friend. Not only was I able to make sense of jumbled letters to form an actual word, it actually helped my vocabulary!

Want to hone your math skills during this period? Try doing Sudoku. Want to increase your vocabulary skills? Crossword puzzles. There’s plenty of books available at a grocery store or a pharmacy near you or go online to pick one up.

Play Video Games

Video games increase your hand-eye dexterity and also challenges you to do certain tasks, albeit in a virtual world. If you can’t travel or go outside as much, video games can also be a good escape from reality.

We have all the major consoles – XBox, Playstation, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo 3DS and even the classic series that came out a few months back. To say we are gamers is an understatement, but gaming went into the back seat after our boy was born.

Now that we have more time in our hands, my husband and I have more time to go through our collection of games and finish what we have. If we get bored or finish what we have, there’s plenty of deals in the digital library available online that we can buy.

My personal favorite game to play with is Super Mario Odyssey on the Switch. It allows you to move through different worlds without leaving the house. You even have a chance to go through the shops and pick up different outfits for Mario. How’s that for a simulation of real life?

Another alternative is the Sims. If you can’t go outside and live the life you want, why not let your Sim live the life you want to do right now while you’re safe at home?

Learn a New Skill/Trade by Reading or Taking Courses

Our public library is closed at the time but the digital library is still open. We can pick up audiobooks and ebooks online and it’s all free thanks to our library account. They even extended the due date of the physical books and media that we picked up before they closed their doors to the public. I currently have enough to last me for a few months, and it always helps to have a few things extra.

If you are not a fan of reading but still want to learn a new skill or qualification, look at taking free or discounted courses through various platforms. I’m currently taking two blogging courses (Hit Publish and Fast Lane Accelerator), Coursera’s The Science of Wellbeing, and will take a social media one after these two are done. Some websites offering courses even provide a certification that you can use and attach to your resume. How’s that for being productive during this quarantine period?

Spend More Time With Your Family

And last but not least, use this time to spend more time with your family at home. Since we have a baby, we are using this time to play more with him and to monitor his growth and other development milestones. We’re incredibly lucky to have this time at home with him, and not have to take him to daycare at the moment.

There have been news that the number of divorces will be higher after this pandemic, and I don’t doubt that. However, we are incredibly lucky that we are one of the few families who love spending time together, and are one with our goals and aspirations.

I find that if one parent is in charge of activities, and that chores are divided equally between the two partners, then there’s a better chance of maintaining harmony in the household. Harmony = living a happy and better home life.

Enjoy Your Time At Home

Obviously these are unprecedented times and nobody knows when to expect things to go back to normal. We should all learn how to cope and change our habits so that we use our time wisely, even though we may not be stepping outside the house.

Hopefully these tips above will help you. Like this article? Please help spread the word by pinning it on Pinterest or sharing with your friends/family!