| Things to do whilst you’re stuck at home. Are you bored at home and feeling stuck and in limbo as the coronavirus changes life for us all? Well, here are some things you could do to make the most of your time… - Plan the next 12 months or five years. There is a lot of uncertainty about the coronavirus but at some point things will settle, we hope. What do you want to achieve in the next year or five years that you can make a start on doing now? Clearly if say going on a particular holiday destination is one of your lifelong goals, then that’s not an option right now – but you could start planning it and working out when is the best time to go and what you might see when. If you prefer, you could do a bucket list of all the things you want to do whilst you’re on earth; not just one-off activities but things you want to get more involved with, or get involved with, people you want to see more of (and less of).
- Take up a hobby. This doesn’t have to be expensive. You could start drawing e.g. your pets, fruit in a bowl, a flower, the view from the window. There are so many “how to” videos online now on places like You Tube that you should be able to find some to help you. Try baking, photography with your phone, singing, keeping fit, reading a book. You could delve into local history, or find out more about something that's tickled your interest for a while.
- De-clutter and re-organise. Do one room at a time. Or one part of a room at a time. Or one part of a part of a room. Clean. Chuck stuff out for recycling. Write a list of what you need to help improve your organisation. What one thing would really make a difference?
- Call people up you haven’t heard from in ages (assuming you want to have them back in your life!). Write note cards to people and cheer their day with post coming through the door.
- Get knitting for animal charities! There's a list of animal charities needing knitters here.
- Watch the wildlife out of your window. What can you see? And what can you hear? Close your eyes, relax and listen to the wildlife around you. The RSPB has lots of information about different birds and also a bird identifier so that you can work out which bird is which.
- Have you got a garden? How wildlife friendly is it? Take a look at it and work out ways you can tweak it to give wildlife a home. This could be as simple as putting up a bird feeder, a bird bath, or giving a hedgehog a hole in your fence so that they can get through to next door. It could mean growing flowers which attract bees and butterflies. It doesn’t take much. See if you can give a square foot or metre over to wildlife in your garden. The Wildlife Trust's website has lots of ideas of ways in which you can make your garden more welcoming to wildlife. They've got a PDF you can download for free
- Put a photobook together. I’m doing one of our German Shepherd and in looking for pictures of him, I’ve come a whole load of photos I didn’t know we had and a video. It’s also been a really good chance (dull as it sounds) to get all our photos organised online and the next project is to go through all the printed photos from bygone days and sort out those I want to keep and those I don’t. It’s also been a prompt to make me wonder what else we want to do in life and what other photos we want to collect from happy times together.
- Do an online course, such as learning a language, gardening, pet care, photography, sign language, social media, hobbies and skills! Red Letter Days has a number of these to choose from.
- Think about something you care really strongly about. What can you do to help that cause or make a difference to it? Who is working to promote the cause now and what help do they need? How can you join up to it? What change do you want to achieve. Make a note of it and make a start seeing how you can change the world for the better.
- Discover more about a wildlife species. Most of us have our favourite – what is yours and how much do you really know about them? How much do you know about where they live in the world, their behaviour, their eating habits, their mating habits, their social life, the challenges facing them and how well placed they are to survive and thrive? Who is helping them (i.e. which charities) and what can you do to get involved and lend a hand? Look for the positive things being done to make a difference and solve problems wildlife are facing – they are plenty of them – and see which ones you can join in to help.
- Volunteer! There’s nothing like helping others to make you feel stronger and more positive about your own situation. You could ring an elderly person who just wants to hear a voice, volunteer for an animal charity in your area (there is always something you can do, it’s just a matter of looking), volunteer for the NHS….
- Have a period of being mindful or in the present each day. Listen to the bird song and sounds of nature outside your window, whether you have a garden or not. They have really come to the fore, since traffic noise reduced so much.
 Mindfulness: A practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world
from Foyles.co.uk - Look for things going on in your area you could get involved with - what's going on? There's always far more than we expect going on under our noses and this could be a good time to research what's happening in your area.
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