Everyone on TV is telling us that we might be confined to our homes for a couple of weeks thanks to the virus that’s getting everyone a little on edge.

Sure, you’ve stocked up on canned goods, but you’re gonna get bored real quick, so here are 20 family-friendly activities you can do to pass the time.

Netflix Marathon

The best binge-worthy shows are right there, ready to watch and now you actually have time to sit and watch them from start-to-finish. Here are 5 of the best:

1. Breaking Bad – Highschool teacher gets cancer and cooks drugs to support his family once he’s gone
2. Broadchurch – A murder mystery in a quiet Cornwall town
3. Schitt’s Creek – Rich family loses their money and moves to a town they bought for a joke
4. Brooklyn 99 – Police comedy series
5. Tiny House Nation – People give up their big homes to move into smaller homes.

Make a Toilet Paper Fort

Congratulations, you made it to Costco and bought all the TP. Since you absolutely won’t need it all, you might as well do something useful with it, like making a huge fort. Better yet, make two and declare war on the other side of the living room.

Get Really Good at Making Coffee

At last, you don’t have to rush out the door with the last drips of the coffee pot. Take your sweet time and hand-grind the beans, make a pour-over, and savour the experience.

Read Some Classics

The great thing about e-books is that you didn’t need to go to the library before you were locked in your home. Just pop on Amazon or your library’s website and download some of the best books ever written (decided by me).

1. Pride and Prejudice – by Jane Austen
2. Wuthering Heights – by Emily Bronte
3. Dracula – by Bram Stoker
4. Frankenstein – by Mary Shelley
5. Around the World in 80 Days – Jules Verne

Get Really Strong

Just like the Con Air montage where Nicolas Cage gets put in jail and then spends his sentence training and learning to fight, ultimately enabling him to get back to his family after the convicts take control of the prison plane, you too can use your time in confinement to do a mix of armchair aerobics, press-ups, and bunk-bed pull-ups. By the time the scaremongers on TV say you can come out, your neighbours will be shocked at your transformation, just in time for beach season!

Compete against your family with phone games

Since you’re probably going to be on your phones anyway, might as well make it a friendly competition. The loser has to do the washing-up.

1. World of Tanks Blitz
2. Arcane Legend
3. Riptide GP Racing
4. Call of Duty: Mobile
5. Words with Friends

Work on Your Garden

Just because you’re indoors, doesn’t mean you can’t grow something. If you’re lucky enough to have your own garden, plant some seeds or better yet, take the seeds out of something you just ate and plant them. Not sure how to collect the seeds? Here’s a fun video.

Make A Delicious Soup

After a few days of realizing you didn’t know as many recipes as you thought, try an easy and yummy soup recipe. It’s mostly throwing everything in a big pot, adding water, seasoning, and stock, and letting it simmer for a few hours.

For more quick recipes to make mealtime a bit more interesting, here’s Gordon Ramsey:

Make a Video Diary

I’ve heard a secret to becoming a big YouTube star is consistency and quality. Now we’re locked in, we all have time to really work on our craft while giving an inside look on life within the quarantine. Share your own crafting tips or advice for passing the time. Perhaps you’ve learned to coordinate with your neighbour across the street with the lost art of semaphore (flag-waving), or have redecorated your home with furniture made from all the spare bathroom tissue you accumulated. Either way, I’d watch.

Got more ideas? I’d love to hear them!