Welcome Back to Feature Friday!
This week, fellow mom blogger, Gwen Payne, is sharing some helpful tips to help keep our sanity while staying home more while navigating this pandemic. Before getting into her article, I wanted to share a little bit about Gwen. Gwen Payne is a stay-at-home mom with an entrepreneurial spirit. Over the years, she has mastered raising her two daughters while side hustling to success through small ventures based on her passions — from dog walking to writing to ecommerce. With Invisiblemoms.com she hopes to show other stay-at-home parents how they can achieve their business-owning dreams. Below I have also linked Gwen’s blog, so make sure to follow and subscribe her blog! Now without further ado, let’s dig in to Gwen’s post!
Tips to Keep Your Family Sane While Spending More Time at Home
Over the last 18 months, we’ve all had an uncomfortably close relationship with the concept of “cabin fever.” And now that cases are on the rise again, it looks like another winter spent at home as well. Psychology Today notes that all that time stuck indoors with your loved ones can start to put a bit of a strain on the relationship. This is totally normal. However, no matter how much your family members love one another, everyone needs a break sometimes. That, combined with the general stress of living through a pandemic, means that it’s perfectly reasonable for tension to start to build up.
Fortunately, there are plenty of extremely effective ways to keep your family sane, happy, and, most importantly, kind through this time. Here are some tips from Sarah Mozingo to help your family get through this next round of isolation:
Revamp Your Home
Listen, if you’re going to be stuck at home, you may as well love your surroundings. Many people have realized over the last year that they don’t really like how their home is decorated. This is the perfect opportunity to rearrange furniture, dust and organize, and turn your home into a place you’re excited to spend time in.
It’s not just a matter of aesthetics, either. Redecorating right now can go a long way toward unmaking all the negative associations you may have built in your home over the last year. It’s only natural to start associating stress with the place in which you’ve experienced it. Redesigning your space can reset its energy and allow you to take on the next few months with a new attitude.
Keep Active
Exercise is one of the absolute best cures for cabin fever. Our bodies need movement in order to properly regulate our energy and hormone levels. Unfortunately, the self-isolation lifestyle doesn’t naturally lend itself to a ton of physical activity. You can change this, however, by making a concerted effort to be more active in your day-to-day life.
For example, you can start going on daily walks or pick up a bike and hit a local trail. You should get your kids active, as well. Exercise is as important — if not more — for younger children bursting with energy.
Stay Compassionate
No matter how good you are about managing COVID-19-related stress, you’re probably going to wind up snapping at one another at some point. Accept this as a normal, natural part of living at this point in history. Instead of getting mad at yourself or your loved ones when you hit this kind of boiling point, try to be compassionate.
This grace should be extended both outward and inward. So if your little one gets short or angry with you, instead of getting upset, EmpoweringParents.com suggests saying something like, “That wasn’t a kind thing to say — are you feeling alright?” This opens up the door for them to express the feelings behind the behavior, which is more effective than simply punishing or admonishing them.
Give yourself the same kindness, as well. If you’re short with your loved ones, apologize and explain that you got overwhelmed. Allow yourself to examine the feelings behind the action, and resolve to do better going forward. If there’s a root cause of stress beyond time at home, perhaps with remote work or navigating a manager role from a distance, look for ways to address the situation. With so much workplace stress for everyone the last year, many companies are more apt to work with staff to help make adjustments.
Remember, this time will pass, but you should be as kind to yourself as possible while it’s happening — and encourage the same for your loved ones. By giving one another the support and care we need, we’ll be able to get through all of this together.
Photo Credit: Pexels
Thanks for reading!
WOW!!!
Thank you so much Gwen for sharing these helpful tips with us and helping us navigate this crazy time where we are all spending more time at home. I love how Gwen shared not only to be compassionate to others but also to ourselves. As moms and parents, it can be so easy to constantly focus on extending grace to others (which of course, we should do) but we need to remember to do the same for ourselves while going through this COVID craziness. Thank you so much again Gwen!
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