Love Comes First: If Mama ain’t Playful: 5 Ways to Play with Your Day

Today’s Love Comes First post is a guest post by Barb Hoyer all about ways that parents can incorporate more play into our lives. The point of this series is to help us healers reconnect with love and relationships. So if you are working hard to heal yourself or working hard to heal someone else you need to also remember that love is your motivation and that love is a good thing. I know that when I can help myself to feel more playful and have more fun everything goes better. I’ve picked up some new ideas from this post to try out myself. Let us know in the comments how you keep play in your life.

~PattyLA

Remember what it was like to glory in summertime as a kid? To play all day long - riding bikes, skipping stones, catching fireflies in the dusk? The truth is, we don’t need to go away somewhere for a vacation to have fun. Play can be part of our everyday routine if we look for ways to feed our senses and have fun.

In ev’ry job that must be done
There is an element of fun
you find the fun and snap!
The job’s a game.
- Mary Poppins

My teenage son has been telling for over a year now to relax, to have fun. It’s not been easy for me. I’ve had a personal issue to deal with for way too many years, and even though the issue has gone, the effect the issue had on our lives as a family is still there. I’m also a bit of a Type A personality. Though having 5 kids has knocked the edges off of my Type A personality. While I may never be the playful mom, I can bring more play into my daily tasks and lighten the atmosphere in my home.

My Favorite Ways to Play

Play upbeat music while doing chores. This is so simple! My kids love it when I turn on a Genesis concert album or a Beatles album. I like to queue up 5 albums and run through them while working around the house. I also love to sing along with the radio in the car. There’s a few local stations that play the 70’s and 80’s songs I grew up with. I don’t care if the kids are with me or not; I drive and belt out the tunes.

Bring color into my world. I love to surround myself with ccolor whether it’s a purple pen for writing notes or my white and purple Otter box for the iPhone. When I take pictures, I think about the colors along with the composition of the photo. I’ve slowly been moving my wardrobe away from the limited palette of white, black, khaki green, and dark colors to oranges, pinks, and yellows.

Go trail running. Running over rocks and logs, dancing through the woods, gets me back to the freedom of being a kid. I started racing again last year, too, focusing mostly on trail races or fun ones like a local Pickle Race.

Use a fun, colorful mug for my morning coffee. It’s a small thing, and a good thing. My Pier One mug with its colorful folk art design makes me smile every time I see it in the morning. I’m always bummed when my favorite mug is in the dishwasher, and I’m stuck using another one.

Pursue photography as a creative outlet. I’ve always loved photography since I was in high school. When my 7 year old Canon digital camera stopped working properly, I convinced my husband to buy me a used digital Canon 50D along with a 28 to 75 mm lens. We’re pretty much inseparable. If the camera isn’t handy, I love using Instagram on my iPhone.

Getting Started with Play

1. Think about why you want to play.

Tap into your creative side? Relief from a stressful job? Health reasons? These reasons can change as you become more playful. Writing them down helps you remember why you wanted to change this part of your life.

2. What does play look like to you?

What made you happy and carefree as a child? What do you gravitate towards as an adult?

3. Commit yourself to one activity in your day that makes you smile.

Maybe it’s walking your kid to school to include nature in your day. Maybe you pick a soundtrack for chore time. All you need to do is pick one thing.

4. Commit to a bigger chunk of time for play monthly.

It helps to get an accountability partner for this. Maybe you and a friend decide to take a hike at a local park, or you take a bike ride.

5. Start a bucket list of fun things you want to try.

You can keep an eye out for deals through Living Social and Groupon, or start a fun account for the bigger budget items.

More Ways to Play

• Surprise your husband with a date to the local miniature golf.
• Take an art class with a friend like painting 101 or pottery 101.
• Find a kitchen chemistry science book at the library and do a few of the experiments with your kids, especially the tactile ones like making goo.
• Announce one Saturday that it’s backwards day which means everyone gets to eat dessert for breakfast.

How Do You Like to Make Your Days More Fun?

Barb is a mom of 5 kids who spends her day keeping track of socks, stuffed animals, library books, and a 4 year old when she isn’t writing about all the frugality, gardening, cooking, and reading she manages to fit in between the chaotic moments. She can be found at A Life in Balance or Frugal Local Kitchen.