Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?

WP Daily Prompt

Naomi and I firmly believe that there should always be time for play in our daily lives. We are getting on in years and when the time comes that we can’t do so much anymore we want fun memories to look back on. We don’t believe we’d get much joy out of reminiscing about how much fun we had cleaning the house and doing chores. Of course we do those things but we make space for play.

How do we play? Well we have fun with our pets. They enjoy a game with one of their toys or sometimes we tease them by hiding a toy or putting a treat where they will have to work to get it. Or maybe dress them up!

We also have fun with our hobbies. For Naomi it’s art. She is experimenting with various projects and having fun with it. Last week she was painting rocks and before that it was a mosaic kit, today she bought polymer clay to try.

My main hobby apart from blogging is collecting dolls. I have all ages and sizes from tiny dollhouse dolls to child size and from vintage to modern. I have a lot of fashion dolls like Barbie, Sindy etc and I enjoy redressing them and photographing them. I like cleaning up rescued dolls from Op Shops and searching the internet to try and identify them. Then I write about them for our doll blog. That’s grown up doll play.

Naomi collects toys so she has some dolls too but also Teddy Bears, robots, zoo and farm animals, Matchbox cars and much more. Our house is full of toys. Sometimes we take some down off the shelf to play with them, power up the battery operated toys and set them off.

We like board games too. Scattergories is a favourite. We have a whole cupboard full of games and jigsaw puzzles and of course when we’re by ourselves we play internet games like Solitaire and Mah Jongg.

I think it is very important to have playtime no matter how old you are. Life can’t just be about work and serious stuff. Whether it’s getting together with your friends to play backyard cricket with a wheelie bin wicket, building a model railway in your garage or spare room, restoring a car, or dressing as Batman or a Stormtrooper and going to a comic book convention if it makes you happy I think it’s good for your mental health. And a lot more fun than housework.