At this point almost everyone has been affected in some way by the Coronavirus, whether you are practicing social distancing, working from home, homeschooling the kids or full on quarantined. Nevada, like most states is under a Stay Home or “shelter in place” order until the end of April.
We never know how isolation is going to affect the ones we love. Even if you are doing just fine, your grandparents might be scared to go grocery shopping or a friend may be feeling totally isolated through all of this. It is hard to balance normalcy while reducing our risk of exposure, but one way to safely connect with people and let them know you are thinking about them is to send a care package.
Here are a few ideas for our quarantined friends.
Friends
- Books: A good book can be a great escape from all of the scary news out there. Drop off one of your favorites, or pick a book that helps them reach a goal or learn a new thing that they have been wanting to learn.
- Puzzles: A great way to kill time or work together on something as a family.
- Meal Kits: Some of our local restaurants are offering fun meal kits that you can pick up, like make your own pizza kit. You could also put one together yourself with the ingredients.
- Wine: Simply drop off a bottle of wine with a sweet note, or an invite to a zoom happy hour.
- Homemade goodies: Are you super skilled in the kitchen? Drop off some fresh homemade bread or cookies. If you know how to sew, drop off some homemade face masks.
- Essentials: If they are sick and cannot go out, pick up some essentials for them, like food staples, soup, fresh produce, or some medicine.
- Quarantine snacks: because we all know we ate all of ours already.
Grandparents
- Ready to eat meals
- Breakfast: Drop off breakfast with a fresh cup of coffee. It will be a nice surprise for them to start their day.
- Puzzles
- Pictures of grandkids: Sometimes it’s tricky to get grandparents on a FaceTime or video chat, so they might enjoy some pictures of your family and what you have been up to.
- Magazines or Games
- Subscription to Netflix: Days with nothing to do can be long, why not share with them some of your favorite shows? Then you can chat about it later on the phone.
- Flowers for their garden: Gardening is a great way to pass the time! Include a bag of soil, some gardening gloves and sunscreen.
- Prescriptions and food staples: Again, saving them a trip to the store can be a lifesaver. Literally.
- Essentials: Make sure they are okay on there supply of essentials like toilet paper, Kleenex, hand soap, laundry detergent, dish soap, shampoo, hand sanitizer, etc.
- Masks – If grandparents are going out to the grocery store or out and about, make sure they have access to a face mask.
Kids
- Games: We really ramped up our game selection when this all went down. Games they can play independently like Guess Who, Operation and Candy Land are all good options. Learning games like Zingo are also great for kids in elementary school.
- Puzzles
- Sidewalk chalk
- Seed/Gardening kits: This really may be the best time to start your own garden. Drop off a few seed packets, some soil and seed cups. Kids can check the progress of their garden each day. When it is time to transplant outside (when all of the snow melts off of Peavine for the season for all you Reno folks), they can watch their garden grow and produce!
- Subscription to Disney+
- Easter Treats
- Subscription to a learning program like ABC Mouse or ABCya so they can do some learning while mom and dad work from home.
- Bubbles
- Pick up a kit: Pottery painting businesses around Reno are offering to-go kits for kids and adults. They provide the pottery to paint and supplies for curbside pickup.
- Doughboys Donuts kit: We picked one of these up and it was a total hit with the kids. It comes with 6 donuts, 3 types of frosting and 2 containers of sprinkles. The kids loved decorating their own donut.
- Art supplies: Coloring books, markers, easter crafts, stamps.
- Lego sets: The lego sets they come out with now are intense! It’s amazing how detailed they are and they keep the kids busy for hours.
- Books
- Garden tools
Reminder: You should use precaution especially when bringing things to your grandparents. Give everything a wipe down with a Clorox wipe before you deliver it to their house. Leave a little note to let them know everything is sanitized to let them know you took the extra step for them.
