What we will continue as a family after lockdown

I have been reflecting on life, during lockdown, over the past few months. It has been over 100 days since lockdown started and all of our lives changed from what we knew. Lockdown has taken away our busyness, our routine and our general pattern throughout the week. It was scary at the beginning but now I am glad. There is quite a lot to take away from this as a family after lockdown.

Family mealtimes

I posted a photo on Instagram (@mummyconstant) with a caption about how the kiddies have changed during lockdown. I truly believe this is due to the fact we eat as a family, three times a day, everyday. Before lockdown we would rarely eat together during the week and would possibly only eat together at the weekend. Even then, we didn’t make a conscious effort to do this all of the time. Now, we do and we are truly in the habit of doing so. We have conversations, as a family and we have a giggle as a family. You can tell the children are happier, confident and they are picking up on words and feelings from us. I have really enjoyed spending more time with them over mealtimes.

Lots of parents are saying the same thing, it’s amazing how many people have commented or messaged me saying how they are loving the family mealtimes and how they didn’t before hand. It’s nice to know that lockdown has brought families together.

Working from home

I am really hopeful that after lockdown I will be working from home more. It will be a lot less stressful when the kiddies have their own space and time for learning. I have enjoyed homeschooling, however I have a job to do too and I will not miss having to work until 10:30pm at night. When the kiddies go back to school I will be able to work during the daytime, I will save an hour without the travel into the office and this means I can get more work done. I will still need to work around the school hours and we are deciding, now, whether or not we need to use the after school clubs anymore. Hubby is not working in the office until 2021, so we know that our work / life balance isn’t going to go back to how it was before. Not right away.

Exploring as a family

We are going to make a conscious effort to not book our weekends up as they were before. Going here, meeting people there and having people over. We barely had time to ourselves. I don’t want to lose this. I have enjoyed having a more relaxed weekend, a less planned and booked up schedule. I am finding more time to recharge at weekends now, because we are taking that time to pause. To explore. To be together. To decide, that morning, what we fancy doing for the day. It is a nice freedom and one I didn’t realise I craved until lockdown.

What are you going to continue once we go back to the way things were pre March 2020? What does it look like for your family after lockdown? I would love to know in the comments below or on social media.