Mama, I see you, pulling out your hair because it’s a pandemic, your children wrapped around you like snakes in a tree. I see your eye twitching when they ask to paint. I feel your pain when your oldest begs for the craft kit that is so finicky, it makes rocket science look simple. I see your exhaustion, and I feel how overwhelmed you are.

Here’s something which will actually help, unlike those endless activity lists for ‘Busy Toddlers’, which just make you feel more inadequate. Oh poor, tired Mama, I created this game just for you, to help you clean your basement, and make your kids happy for ten minutes.

The Recycling Game

1. Forget to wheel out the recycling cart for two and a half months until it fills to the brim and your toddler has to tap dance on the lid to make the cart close.
2. Miss recycling day twice more. It’s more fun if you miss it by a minute and try to chase the recycling truck down the street in your pyjamas while hauling an overflowing cart behind you shouting, “Wait! Wait!”
3. Pile up the recycling in the corner of your basement like an environmentally minded hoarder.
4. Finally remember recycling day so the cart is emptied. Wheel the empty cart to a doorway. Employ some child labor and have your preschooler ferry boxes of recycling up from the basement to the door, while talking up the fun of the ‘Recycling Game’.
5. Have your children stand on the steps and throw the recycling into the cart while yelling random numbers when the items go in: Seventeen points! Thirty points! Forty two points! Twenty points!
6. The game ends when you run out of recycling or your baby falls face first in the snow. If both happen at the same time it’s called Kite Crash and everyone wins.
7. Forget recycling for three months so you can play again.

Feel better Mama, you can’t see it, but there is an end to the pandemic in sight and regardless of how you feel, you ARE doing a good job.