Use lockdown time to get creative in your park home

Being confined to your park home doesn’t have to spell boredom. All you need is some structure, some ideas and some DIY goals. We’ve come up with five top ideas to beat boredom and turn home time into fun time

1. Upgrade or refurbish

If you’re reasonably competent at DIY, any projects that upgrade or refurbish your park home are going to be really satisfying. Anything you need can be bought online – you may well have already done that anyway.

Do your kitchen units need new doors, perhaps? You can transform a kitchen by this means – change its look, its colours, its character. Would your bathroom or shower room benefit from new tiles? While tiling is quite a skilled job, you can follow an online course before you start. Fit new curtain poles if you are tired of the present method of hanging your curtains, perhaps – and, if you can sew, you could make new curtains, rather than buying ready-made ones.

Wallpapering and painting are also projects that are ideal – they’re time-consuming, yes, but very satisfying, and again, all the materials that you need can be easily bought online. So, you can make your park home look like new. We recommend drawing up a list of projects that, perhaps, you’ve been thinking of completing for some time and now, staying at home can provide the motivation you need.

2. Get in the garden

“When the going gets tough – garden”. That’s the wording on a rustic-design wooden plaque which keen gardener friends of ours have above the door of their shed. They put it up in good times, but now, its words take on a whole new meaning.

Start from scratch: plant seeds (they can be bought online) – and many seed merchants offer advice on their websites; that’s where to start if you’re delving into cultivation for the first time.

Grow vegetables as well as flowers; the satisfaction of growing for your own table is immeasurable! Buy a bird table and some bird food to encourage feathered visitors to your garden. Bug boxes are in fashion right now – and so very eco; watch bees and lacewings make their home in your garden!

3. Experiment with your cooking

Forget the convenience and speed of ready-meals. Now we have time to get creative and enjoy concocting dishes that maybe we’ve never made before. Start online, as with most things; inspiration is at the click of a mouse.

If you’re a follower of TV cookery programmes maybe you’re inspired already – you can further that inspiration by, perhaps, following TV chefs whose programmes you enjoy. Jamie Oliver, Hairy Bikers, Nigella Lawson, Tom Kerridge, Gordon Ramsey... Whoever you enjoy watching on TV, go online and discover loads of their recipes to create.

4. Get baking

If you’ve always bought your bread, this is an ideal time to start making it. Breadmaking is time-consuming – although you can of course buy a breadmaker. The five steps of breadmaking – mixing, kneading, rising, proving and then baking – are all done for you by a breadmaker but, in these days of making time for enjoying creativity, it’s far more satisfying to do everything yourself.

Go for olive bread, tomato bread, corn bread and more... Again, start your baking ‘career’ by seeking out the plethora of advice and info that’s available online. And if you're not going out to the supermarket for your weekly shop then all ingredients can be ordered online.

5. Get some exercise

If you only walk for half an hour each day you are benefiting your fitness level. The further you walk each day, the fitter, in the long term, you will feel. So, consider starting a regime of walking further each day (keeping within the hour a day regulation, mind you). Don’t be merely a fine-day walker – if you embark on a walking-for-fitness regime you really should go out every day, even if it’s raining. If you have been accustomed to going to a gym, you probably really miss it.

Go online and search for small-scale exercise equipment that you can buy to keep toned up. Few people will have the space for a cross-trainer or a running machine at home but you can buy small exercise equipment; weights, dumbells, mini steppers, resistance bands, folding pedal exercisers and more are available.

You can find more park and holiday home inspiration with Park and Holiday Home Inspiration magazine - available to buy here