Let me guess: how many sentences have you read in the past few weeks which contained the words lockdown, confinement, quarantine or social distance? 15? 80? 200?

I will spill the tea: this post, which I hope you are about to read, is… drum roll please… yet another one on the subject, albeit a non-informative one. Fellow mamas: the situation in itself is worthy of  dozens, if not hundreds of blog posts. There is no other way to describe it: living, working full-time and home-schooling a small child under the same roof as a single parent in lockdown conditions is an ordeal. It’s probably the most mentally-exhausting and challenging event I faced as a solo mum. But hang in there: humour will save us from going insane. These are the low-key hacks which are making quarantine life more digestable for my son and I.

1. When it comes to home-schooling… Lower your expectations ( to the lowest possible level, if necessary)

Things are tough as they are to add yet more pressure trying to be the perfect home-schooling mum. I am not sure if even make it to the average category (probably not) but after feeling rubbish for not being capable of making three lovely manual crafts per day and having had several outbursts which have made this quarantine even more stressful, I have simply surrendered and ditched the aspiring-good-home-schooling-mum badge. Truth is, I don’t want it ( insert smug-face emoji here). Ok, let’s put it this way: 6 months of botched home-schooling is a tiny fraction of time in the arc of my son’s academic lifetime, so if I have to welcome a bit of anarchy in my recently acquired home-schooling duties, I do so with open arms. While this does not mean that I let him sneak on You Tube and binge watch on Sponge Bob, I have made the following decisions:

• Carefully pick the activities which motivate him most out of the homeschooling week plan.
• Let him be creative in his own way, even if that means cuttting out magazine pictures to make collages or banging on the drums for hours on end.
• Don’t get frustrated if I don’t achieve any of the above.

2. Putting some lippy on goes a long way

 Those of you who are partial to red lipstick please raise your hands. As banal as it may sound, I tell you: in times of widespread uncertainty and dispair never underestimate the power of  mundane things, lipstick being one of them. I must say I have to credit  the requests to send video birthday greetings and take part in virtual work leaving-dos for that,  and I heartfeltly thank them as they were the nudge I needed to force myself to comb my hair and put on some lippy, which make me feel like a totally different person. So different, that it is now part of my daily routine even when I don’t leave the house, which happens pretty often as of recently.  In Coronavirus times, it feels nice to not feel gross 100% of the time. Pun intended.

3. Play the silence challenge

We love our children, don’t we. And our devotion can be as intense as our strong desire to make them shut up after spending days on end in this crazy quarantine loop. I will be honest: sometimes, I feel the urge to tell my kid: “Honey, listen, mum cannot talk to you anymore for the rest of the day, ok”? Diplomatic and loving approach? No. Harsh? Um, could be. Days roll in and out, work and dirty laundry pile up, and you have just grown weary of answering questions on repeat and having to wear the entertainer hat ALL the time. The sole thought of peeing on your own feels like a luxury… If you are on the same boat, I tell you: try the silence challenge: in separate rooms (obvious, right?) test which one of you can stay the longest in total silence. The winner, needless to say, gets a prize but not of the ordinary scale, because, tadaaah: winner can even pick up their own treat!  I invite you to give it a go, and if they get the hang of it, consider yourself lucky. There you have it: your 10-ish minutes of  daily silence. And you don’t even have to wait for them to be in bed. You’re welcome.

4. Marvel at the small things that usually go unnoticed  

As I’m writing this, different countries across the globe have eased to some degree their lockdown restrictions allowing people to spend some time outside the confines of their homes. My advice is to use – and cherish- that slot you’ve been granted and appreciate everything we simply don’t notice or acknowledge when we are running around at our usual fast pace. If you are lucky enough to be close to nature or the sea, bask in those tiny precious moments: rejoice in simple things such as seeing the sunlight hitting on tree leaves and hold on to these snapshots of happiness and freedom to look forward to collecting more moments as the days go by. Look up and remind yourself that life is more than this -awful-moment in time.

5. Plan a -future -solo trip or simply dream about it

I am not talking about wishful thinking here but daydreaming with a purpose, so to speak. As much as travel seems to be off the table for the forseeable, be it enforced by country-imposed restrictions or for fear of getting the bug, it does not mean we cannot take solace in planning for that longed-for solo trip or dreaming about the possibility of it becoming a reality in the, we hope, not-so-distant future. I ecourage you to get onto your research, do some far-fetched planning and relish in the possibility. We need small nuggets of happiness more than ever. The pleasure will be amplified when we’ll be able to travel again.

Photo credit: diego_torres Pixabay ( under CCL)