Seven things to do with your housemates during lockdown

Here we go again. As the year goes on and we head nearer to Christmas, it’s no surprise that we find ourselves back in a second national lockdown. During the last one, I was with my parents back home but this time around I find myself in a new house with people my own age. In the last lockdown, I went on walks around my familiar neighbourhood and chilled with my parents but this time around I need a whole new plan for keeping myself occupied.

Now, unfortunately, we all have work to do because although the rest of the world has come to a standstill, university has not. However, we simply cannot let ourselves become characters in Groundhog Day – just waking up, doing work, and going back to sleep is no way to live.

So, when lockdown got announced my housemates and I sat down and made a list of fun things we could do to break up the everyday drudgery of yet another lockdown. Here are a few of the things we came up with, maybe you could try a few with your housemates, or even over Facetime calls with other friends and family.

Start a new TV show together

Taking the time to watch something together can be a lot of fun, especially if you find something good. Now TV sticks or Amazon Fire sticks can be bought at relatively inexpensive prices if you’ve got a shared TV and want to invest in something to make all those hours spent in the living room worth it.

If you’ve got Netflix, I would recommend Black Mirror as it provokes discussions and is just generally a great show. We also watched High School Musical the Series on Disney Plus which, as much as I hate to admit it, was very enjoyable.

Have a Come Dine With Me night

I’m sure any TikTok lovers out there have seen the trend going round which involves university students putting on their own version of the hit evening TV series Come Dine With Me. Remove the element of awkwardness of being with strangers and the pressure of winning a thousand pounds in cash and you’ve got a great night filled with food, entertainment and a lot of laughs.

Assign each housemate a day to make everyone else a meal. Pick a theme, design a menu, make a meal, and provide a form of entertainment. You can even rate each other’s meals and have a final winner and come up with a cool prize. For added fun, document the process on your phone to look back on.

Get your group project on and have a PowerPoint slide night

You may have seen this trend floating around on social media but if you haven’t here is the basic premise. Each member of the house makes a PowerPoint to present to the rest of the house and there is only one rule – it has to be ridiculous. It could be anything from which Disney characters your housemates remind you of to a ranking of your favourite types of wood. Get weird and have fun.

Follow a Bob Ross tutorial

Get YouTube up on the TV and whack on a good old Bob Ross tutorial. Get your crayons out and your varying levels of art skills and have a laugh. Hang up the final pieces for decoration. Art is a great way of bringing people together and doing something relaxing which doesn’t involve a lot of brainpower or technology.

Create a treasure or scavenger hunt

You can either make your own or get one off the internet. This can range from the classic hiding things around the house with clues to a more intense game of murder mystery. If you’ve got a big, old student house filled with lots of weird and wonderful places to hide things, this can work so well.

Make a film lucky dip

With four weeks of lockdown, there is plenty of time to watch all of the films you’ve been saying you’ll watch for ages. Each write down a few films that you want to watch on a piece of paper, fold them up and put them into a cup. Whenever you feel like watching something, grab a piece of paper and see where you end up!

Other ideas

This could include a games night, decorating your house for Christmas, learning origami, poker (preferably without money because we are all broke university students after all), blindfolded games and making a house Instagram account.

So, as we get into this second lockdown with lots of time spent in our student houses – it’s useful to have a list of things to do in preparation for all the time we’ll be spending with our flatmates. In short, get creative and don’t be scared to think outside the box for ways to have fun as a flat.