Did you pick up a brand-new hobby to get you through lockdown that has already worn a little thin? Well don’t you worry, we are here to help!

Here are a few tips on how to keep your new hobbies interesting for the foreseeable

Video games

Have you been spending lockdown inside virtual worlds living your best life? A lot of us have picked up open-ended games to get us through this open-ended time. Like Minecraft, the Sims or Animal Crossing (I just got my switch and it’s all I’m doing!). These kinds of games are great for the long haul, but they can get a little repetitive, so why not try out some fun challenges. If you search the name of your preferred game with ‘challenge’ on the end you can often find a whole load of brand-new ways to enjoy your fave game. A personal favourite of mine is the Sims 100 baby challenge where, you guessed it, you attempt to have 100 babies in the sims all with different dads, but you can find tons of them out there, your video games don’t have to be repetitive ever again!

Crafts

There’s something about quarantine that is making us all embrace our ‘cottage-core’ tendencies. I don’t know why locking me inside has made me want to become my Grandma, but it has! A fun way to keep your new crafts fun as well as keeping track of the days, because let's be honest what even is time right now? Is to create a tracking craft, there are tons of examples of these online from people cross-stitching different colours to mark down the average temperature every day to keeping track of your daily moods through knitting coloured blanket squares instead of a bullet journal. You get something to keep your mind busy and at the end of all this you’ll have something cool to mark it with, win, win!

Gardening

Did you have the brainwave that you could ride out the pandemic by learning to grow your own food in your makeshift window box in your tiny flat? Are you now overwhelmed with plants you don’t know how to take care of? Why not make yourself a chart with each plant's individual daily needs (Google will be your friend here), so that you can keep on top of it. It’s another great way to remind yourself what day it is and if you give them all names you have a whole bunch of new buddies to hang out with!

Plus, if you are really struggling try drawing little faces on their pots it’s harder to forget to feed something when it is staring at you looking hungry!

Cooking

Cooking is obviously essential, but it can also be a fun distraction. Let’s be honest, most of the time we are all guilty of making the same couple of meals because they are quick and easy. But we’ve all got tons of time now so why not mix it up? Experiment with slow roasting, spend a whole day working on a stew, call your grandma and ask her to talk you through that family recipe you never learned. Your regular food shop might have a couple items that are kinda hard to get right now so why not buy something new and try to make something with it?

My granny lives alone, and we have all been very worried about her being lonely so over the weekend we facetimed her as she talked us through her famous jam tart recipe. She got to spend some time with us, and we got jam tarts! It really was a win win.