Your house is your castle. Why bother leaving your flat if you can have this much fun inside?
The Floor is Lava
We all remember this absolute classic from our childhood. If not, let us enlighten you. The game has one sole premise: the floor is lava. If any part of your body touches the lava it will burn, melt and eventually fall off. Do not touch the lava. You must utilise whatever household object you can in order to avoid your imminent incineration. Sacrifice your pillows, plates, blankets and flatmates. Whoever stays alive for the longest can claim victory.
Mattress Surfing
Inspired by The Princess Diaries, this is for the fearless thrill seekers who are fortunate enough to have a staircase in their flat. From a logistics point of view, a single mattress is preferable and perhaps create a landing pad of blankets and pillows to greet you once you reach the bottom of the staircase. Mattress surfing can be competitive in a multitude of ways: the fastest surf could take the crown or perhaps even whoever makes it down without falling off. A further variation of a mattress related sport that’s more of a marathon than a sprint is the cleanup afterwards. It’s all a question of who can go the longest sleeping without their mattress before undergoing the ordeal of dragging those mattresses back up the stairs.
That Cup of Tea
This is less of a game and more of a science experiment, with a potentially deadly edge. Best not to mention it to Health and Safety, or any of your more hygienic friends. You know that cup of tea that you just forgot to drink? It was too hot and then by the time it reached optimum temperature for consumption you were too distracted by social media to remember its existence. Just leave it for a couple of days, weeks or months. Regularly document the evolution of your creation, take pictures and share its progress on social media like the millennial you are. Who knows? You might be growing the next lifesaving bacteria, or maybe just some really gross mould. Either way, you’ll have a great time. Your flatmates, not so much.
Footsie (foot battle)
The ultimate measure of sibling supremacy is footsie. This full (foot) contact sport only requires one couch, two people and four feet. You and your opponent each choose a side of the couch and lay down on it, facing each other, with your backs propped up against your respective armrests. Once you’ve aligned your feet so that you are sole-to-sole, the battle begins. Whoever manages to get their legs straight first or to knock the other person’s legs off the couch (using only their feet) wins. Beautiful.
Balloon Volleyball
This is the sport that never gets old. Between the dynamism of preventing a balloon from touching the floor on your side of a barrier to the escapade of landing it on the ground on your opponent’s side, the fun just does not end. The rules are basically the same as volleyball without all the technical complications or hand eye coordination. Just serve a balloon to the other side of a couch or hastily established string ‘net’ and bat it back and forth until one of you spikes your way to victory. To extend the game, just play where contact with the ground on your opponent’s side earns you one point and play to however many points you want.
Image courtesy Martin Cathrae