Lockdown Month in Review

My last day in the office, before we began the social distancing lockdown to fight the novel coronavirus, was March 13.  So today marks the beginning of the second month confined largely to home with my family of six.  What has it been like?

1.  Pre-lockdown life was way too busy.  In addition to the "jet lag" problem that I wrote about earlier, our family online calendar used to look like a colorful contemporary art piece, with multiple events for multiple people every day.  All of that got eliminated overnight.  Some of it we miss (kids soccer games, monthly dinner out with our supper club); a lot of it we don't.  In fact, I think a lot of our activities we were involved in just to keep us from being bored at home.  Now we know we aren't bored at home, so hopefully we will be more selective once the lockdown ends.

2.  There is freedom in the structure of routine.  We value our routine that we have fallen into:  set meal times (approximately set:  we aren't running a monastery or naval ship), daily exercise breaks, plenty of time for school and work, nightly entertainment.  Having a routine eliminates decisions (what time should we eat?) which reduces stress.  Within the routine, though, there is lots of freedom for when school and work gets done.

3.  We like our family meal times.  my wife and I have been eating lunch outside in the sunshine every day.  Now that no one has activities in the evenings, all six of us linger longer at the dinner table.  (Longer is relative:  15 minutes instead of kids dashing off as soon as their food is chewed and swallowed.)  For some reason, there has been much less strife among the kids since the lockdown began, even though the college student really wishes he weren't here.

So now we are starting to think about life after lockdown, assuming it begins to lift in a month or so.  What should we add back to our schedules?  How can we maintain some of the good vibes we have now?