Losing power is a common occurrence for many people throughout the world, and it can be pretty hard to deal with if you’re easily anxious by the situation or have a family to keep sane and happy while waiting until your power comes back on. Chances are, like most of us, you tend to just focus on keeping everyone comfortable or safe rather than on entertainment. And that’s okay since safety is a priority especially since power outages often come from scary situations.
However, it can also be pretty useful to think of a plan for keeping everyone laughing or at least away from fear. This can make the time go by faster while waiting, keep younger children feeling safe, help reduce stress, create bonding time, and so much more. Here are some fun ways to stay entertained when power goes out to help you get that plan in place for the future.
Board Games
Board games are a classic for many households, and often get forgotten with the hustle and bustle of everyday life as well as how much we rely on technology in our daily lives. This means that a power outage could really be a perfect opportunity to tune back into your inner child and spend some time playing board games with your family. You can even have a specific game or games set aside just for if you lose power, that way you can access them easily.
Tell Stories or Chat
Talking can really do a lot more than we realize in wasting away time spent waiting for something to happen, whether you talk about things going on in your own lives or tell silly stories together or play word games like adlibs. No matter how you communicate, get talking! It will really give you all something to think about besides the power situation and help you all be able to relate to each other better or catch up on missed events and talks from daily life.
Create a Space
This more so goes for preparing ahead of time, but it can also be good entertainment. Create a space specifically designated for when an emergency like this happens in your home, such as the living room or in a bedroom or so on. Make sure every family member and house member knows this, so that once emergency preparedness is taken care of you can all meet here. You can even decorate it during the power outage or create a fort together to have some fun.
Learning Time
If you have family members in school, you can learn about what they’re doing in school or build on that learning with homework or workbooks during the time spent bored while the power is out. You can also learn something new by reading a book, writing things down on your mind or writing a book yourself, talking with your family members, teaching your kids something interesting, doing crafts or science projects, and more. The options are limitless.
Entertainment can be a really great asset to your plan for emergency situations like having power outages, because it helps have something more useful for your family members and yourself to do after you have already made sure everything is safe and prepared for the duration of your power outage. You should always spend time checking on your house safety, making sure pets and family members are safe and adequately warm or cooled, insulating your home if needed, figuring out light sources, and more; but maybe you should also sit down afterwards with your house members to spend some time keeping each other entertained.
It really can do wonders for the time you spend with the power out at home. Hopefully these ideas can give you something to start with for this idea in your future emergency plan or to discuss with your house members.