Avoid Boredom When You’re Stuck at Home – Share Some Gifts!

Posted by Donna

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Are you looking to avoid boredom at home?

Do you need to find some ways to keep everyone engaged?

Maybe you want to stay connected with friends and family?

This might be a good time to celebrate some holidays or birthdays in advance. Share some gifts and spread a little joy.

Create your own celebration

If you have children at home then you might be looking for ways to keep them busy. Or maybe you have an extended family under one roof.

Watching movies and playing video games can be fun. But you also want to encourage other activities. You need to have some variety to avoid boredom at home.

How about planning a holiday or a birthday in advance? Or maybe you create your own event – a fake, made-up day for celebration. Why not?!

Event planning

If you actually have an upcoming holiday or a birthday then your event theme is all set. But if not, then you can be creative.

Involve your friends and family in the process. Planning for a celebration is half the fun, after all. 😎

So what do you need to plan? You can see details in this article all about last-minute party planning. But let’s review the elements:

Pick a date and choose the venue
Determine participants/invitees
Set your theme and brainstorm decorations
Figure out food and drink and decide on entertainment
Consider photography

This is an opportunity to get the whole family involved. Set up a whiteboard with tasks and dates. Avoid the boredom at home by getting everyone working on the celebration planning.

Avoid the boredom at home by getting everyone working on the celebration planning.

This is a great way to involve kids of all ages. Give everyone tasks and deadlines based on their interests and age.

For example, creative types might want to focus on decorations and entertainment. Older children and teenagers might enjoy choosing music and figuring out the technology to bring everyone together for the event.

Pick a date

Ensure you choose a date far enough in advance that you can plan everything you want to include. For example, if you need to order items online then you need some lead time.

Plus, you want to have enough time to coordinate your activities and participants.

Choose the venue

This article is all about avoiding boredom at home so… your venue will be your home. No decision required. 😉

Invite party goers

This can be fun as you’re not limited by the venue. Although this party will be at your home, people won’t physically be visiting your home. How fun!

BUT – you will have limitations with the virtual attendance options (video conferencing limitations). So, you will want to limit the number of attendees. Or you could stagger when the attendees join the party.

Get your whole family on board with this task. Have each family member suggest people to invite and work out the logistics together. Then post the list somewhere everyone can see it. And add to it as other ideas come to mind.

This generates some enthusiasm and keeps everyone motivated. Something to look forward to. That’s a serious boredom buster for your home life!

Plus, you can send some virtual invitations. Some cool options:

Or you could even go old-school and send physical invitations snail-mail style. Zazzle has some cute invitations and you can even add your own images.

Rock a theme and decorate!

This is a perfect excuse to dress up your home. And you don’t have to be too practical because you won’t have physical guests wandering through.

You have sooo many options. Go wild:

Food, Drink, and Entertainment

This is another category where you can be creative. As this is a virtual party, you only need food and drink for your own family.

But how do you engage people in entertainment for an online party?

You’re going to need some cameras. Some webcams, or some laptops or tablets or smartphones with built-in cameras, or even an actual video camera.

And your guests will also need cameras:

Plus, you’ll need to choose software to link those devices so everyone can see each other. That’s probably the biggest challenge.

Some options to consider:

WhatsApp video – you’re limited to four (4) participants (households you call) with this option
Skype – up to 50 participants
Zoom – up to 100 participants but only 40 minutes at a time

There are others, but these are the most well-known that your guests might be familiar with. And for WhatsApp and Skype, your guests need to have accounts.

I didn’t include Facetime as an option because it requires all your guests to be using iOS devices only.

Save the memories

Part of the fun of any party is sharing the silly moments afterward. So you’ll want to get some photos or video of the event.

You can post these on your social media after the event. Or, you might want to consider using Loom for video.

Loom lets you record from your laptop. Then you share a link to the cloud location where your video is stored.

So no concerns about transmitting super large video files. And only those with the link can view your video. Plus, Loom has a free registration option. 😀

Virtual party games

As long as you have cameras setup then you can play some games with your virtual party attendees. What a great way to avoid boredom at home!!!

Some of these do require advanced planning to ensure your invitees have the necessary equipment.

Some ideas for you:

Hide and Seek

For smaller children, this can be a lot of fun. But it needs a variation update. The rules:

One household is designated as “hide” and another household is designated as “seek.” All other households are cheer leaders!
One person in the hide household is the “robot” and everyone else hides.
The seek household directs the movements of the robot (who moves with a video camera so everyone can watch) to chase down all those who have hidden.
When everyone has been found then different households take turns being “hide” or “seek.”

Board games

If all the households have the same board game then they can be played together. Or maybe part of your party planning is sending everyone a copy of a new board game!

But you’ll need to keep track of all the other boards. So every move by every player needs to be called out on video so all the boards can be updated. It can take a bit more time to coordinate all the boards.

So you might want some older children/teenagers to help organize the boards and track all the turns.

Virtual Jenga

Jenga is a perfect option for a virtual party. You can setup your camera just once and leave it there. You can take turns with the different households so you’ll always see the fun of the heap toppling.

And it’s a game that can be played with a large range of age groups.

Gifts to share

What if you’re invited to a virtual party? What’s the protocol?

Depending on the nature of the celebration, and if you have the ability, then you could consider sending a gift. You could deliver the gift to the door if you live in the area. But a delivery service is a great option.

If the party is for a child’s birthday then I would definitely recommend sending something. And this is where Amazon can be very useful.

They’re already set up for awesome delivery service. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re geographically close.

Some ideas based on age ranges…

Toddlers: up to 3 years old

For toddlers, you want to get them something that will keep them engaged and active. Avoiding boredom in your home with very small children contributes to parents’ sanity!