ISOLATION WITH FAMILY OF 14
There will be 12 kids at home while the Shelling family is in lockdown – including one freshly back from Auckland.
But life on their rural block on the Coromandel Peninsula won’t change a lot under alert level four.
That said, mum Shelly Shelling felt as if eyes were on her during a grocery shop a couple of days beforehand.
‘‘We fill up a cart, as you can imagine, with a large family. I felt like people are probably looking at me and thinking we were panic buying and stocking and raiding shelves. But this actually is just our normal weekly shop.’’
Her home-schooling, musical, Christian family lives on a lifestyle block in Tapu, about half an hour north of Thames.
And they’re fairly well placed to weather the four weeks of isolation, because it’s far from unusual for everyone to be together.
They’re already a home-schooling family and dad Andrew works from home.
There will be two extra bodies around – third-eldest Daniel won’t be heading out to building apprentice work, and eldest child Hannah came back from living and working in Auckland.
‘‘She didn’t fancy being stuck up in Auckland . . . She figures living on a rural block will be more conducive to having stuff to do.’’
Dad Andrew has a business building sleepouts, though, and plans to get them to put some together during the month.
The others plan to do lots of music, crafts, and baking, and there’s been a bit of hasty planting to create a vegetable garden.
Life on the country block also means the Shellings can get a change of scene without breaking isolation rules.
‘‘We can go for a walk in the bush or we can go to the river . . . We’re quite blessed here. I feel for people who live in apartment blocks or even dense housing.’’
Their house, however, isn’t so big – 190sqm, plus a sleepout.
Finding space to themselves is a constant challenge for some in the family, Shelley said, especially in wintery months.
Their home has one bathroom, where the toilet is in with the shower, so you have to be fast to get your turn.
No-one likes using the emergency loo outside, because there are spiders.
Something the Shellings do like is music – everyone in the family plays or sings.
One change during lockdown will be the absence of piano lessons in Thames.
‘‘We have the option of doing it online with our teacher, because she’s quite tech savvy.
‘‘But the way we live here at our home – it’s quite a small home and sort of open plan main living area. And that’s where the piano is, so that would be quite hard.
‘‘I think we’re going to just give it a miss for a month. Two of those weeks would have been school holidays anyway.’’
Church services and local bible study groups are off, too, but the family will be praying for grandparents in isolation and a friend’s daughter over in Europe.
For those unused to lockdown lifestyle, Shelley’s advice is not to put too much pressure on yourself . . . give yourself a mental break – turning off your phone, reading a happy book, or ringing or writing to someone else – could help, she said.