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Family fun

27th Mar 2020

#entertainingathome: create a post-shutdown ‘to-do jar’ with the kids

Melissa Carton

A great idea.

Right now we’re living through a fairly stressful time and it can be hard to stay positive.

Between not being able to visit family and friends and cancelling travel plans, it can feel like we’ve nothing to look forward to.

Given time though, this too will end and when it does there is going to be a lot of things that we all want to do.

Thinking ahead and thinking positively can really help your mental health and well being during self isolation, so this weekend why don’t you start a post-shutdown to-do jar with your children.

I first saw the idea being shared by mum Katie Eborall and I thought this is great.

Katie explained what she and her children have been writing for their jar and it might help give us all some inspiration for our own jars;

“Every time we wish we could do something, go somewhere, treat ourselves, see someone we love, visit a new place, invite people to visit us, we’re going to write it down on a post it note and put it in a jar.

When all this is over this will be our bucket list and we’ll work our way through the jar and be more grateful than ever for the little and lovely things in our lives. Until then we’ll enjoy watching the jar fill up with magical things to look forward to.”

To make it a little extra fun you can always use different coloured paper for different plans, example, visits such as to family and friends could be purple paper while travel plans could be green paper.

Having everything colour coded can also help you break up what tasks you decide to do once the shutdown ends without pulling several similar things out of the jar at the same time.

I really love this idea and will have to start working on my own one with my family this weekend.