Actually it’s only our fourth lockdown. But it was my daughter’s eleventh birthday recently and the promised trip to the mall (to see if she could figure out what she wanted, since she has no ideas) never happened.

What she needs is a hoodie, and she only likes the zip-through ones. For older girls these are very hard to find! She’s outgrown cutesie stuff made for little girls and while she’s tall enough for age 14 clothes she doesn’t like the ubiquitous logo black and grey stuff made for teenagers.

What on earth are tweens supposed to wear?

And guess what her birthday present was? An executive chair for her desk. She spends a lot of time at her computer because of remote learning, and because she’s writing spreadsheets with her dad for a card game about dragons. Until now she’s been sitting crunched up on a dining room chair, often sharing with a cat.

I also gave her these…

What are your go-to family favorite games? As a child, we were a Scrabble-or-Canasta family. Friends in America introduced us to Euro boardgames 15 years ago, and we’ve been crazy about them ever since.

My state is currenly on lockdown for a week – no leaving the house except for essential shopping, work, medical, and exercise, as well as remote learning for school kids.

I’d like to achieve something concrete during this time, so as mentioned in my last post I’m clearing up my front room. We have one games cabinet and I need to cull our boardgames to fit in there. My daughter and I piled every single board game we own on the tables and… well, we have 87. That’s just ridiculous. Some are decades old, belonging to my husband – he hasn’t played them since before we met. We have 10 or so that we regularly play, and another 20 we enjoy a lot, but surely the rest can be thrown out, resold, or at least stored away until they’re forgotten about? To that end, I’ve ordered three huge heavy-duty storage crates!

I’ll take you on a tour of some of the games we enjoy as a family. None of these are the classic “roll the dice and move” games such as Monopoly. Euro games, if you haven’t tried them, well, you’re missing out! They’re often not particularly competitive, which makes them less stressful for kids, and for me. You build your own worlds rather than fretting too much about what other people are doing, so the experience is fun even if you don’t win.

You know how there’s that one space in your home that becomes a junk space? A drawer in the kitchen, a closet in the hall, a basket on the countertop, a corner in the bedroom… or sometimes, an entire room!

My state of Victoria just went into lockdown after a new outbreak of COVID-19. I have lots of writing to get through, but I also have a mess of a front room to deal with, a year’s worth of junk piling up as I clear out other spaces in the house… and I think it needs to become my lockdown project.