Last Updated on March 12, 2020
10 things to keep you busy during lockdown – a lighthearted look.
As more and more cases of the Covid-19 Coronavirus are being diagnosed daily in Israel, the number of people in quarantine is mushrooming. Laying about is great on the first day but on the 2nd and 3rd days, one might be starting to climb the walls. Here are some suggestions to keep you busy during this stressful time.
1. Binge TV – catch up on all your Turkish telenovelas (The Bride of Istanbul is back!) or catch the latest flick on Netflix. Preferably, you want to have a stash or Pringles for this one.
2. There are apparently 150 variations of Klondike and solitaire; the pyramid, clock, spider, Yukon, golf and poker solitaire are just a few. Make sure you have a standard deck of 52 playing cards for this pastime. Serious solitaire players can download apps from the Google- or the App-Store.
3. Make a 3D Origami swan. The art of Japanese paper folding. should keep you busy for hours. A ream of a paper should keep you going. You need between 400 and 450 paper triangles for this project. In fact, with the basic triangle you can make an endless number of shapes – let your creative juices flow. Here are instructions for the basic triangle…
4. One-man Scrabble – test yourself. After 20 years of Aliyah, can you still spell in English? Do you remember any 7 letter words? Write them down and If not, learn some new Hebrew words.
5. Try doodling – absentminded scribbling. You can doodle circles, cubes, flowers, faces, parallel lines that never end, basket weaves, decorate letters of the alphabet and much, much more. When you have completely filled up an A3 page with all of these, send a photo of your artwork to a friend and ask them to decipher your inner psyche.
6. Build a tent with your bedding. Remember when you were a kid, you built a secret place in your bedroom. Tie blankets and sheets to door-handles and keep the opposite sides weighted down on the bed with heavy books. This activity might be difficult if you no longer have any books at home. You can’t very well keep a sheet weighted down with an ebook reader.
7. Grab your kids Lego blocks when they aren’t looking and build a tower. How high can you go? You have to have your tower done and dismantled before your kids get back from school otherwise they will know that you sneaked (hmmm, or should that be snuck?) out of quarantine.
Update – since schools have closed, this activity is no longer possible.
8. File all your household papers that have been lying around for years. Or perhaps more fun – when you’ve sorted the papers into piles, put them back in the shoe-box and say to yourself “I don’t really have the time for this now. I’ll do it another time”.
9. Only one month until Pesach. Clean the windows, cupboards, shelves, light fittings, repack everything and then start again tomorrow. Best to be prepared for the holidays. If you have stocks of aluminum foil you can already take your Pesach prep one step further – just admit it, you bought extra aluminum foil when you stockpiled toilet paper!
10. We couldn’t come up with a 10th one-man activity. Any ideas?
