Struggling with unstructured time at home with two children

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Or honestly it feels like that and I’d appreciate useful insights or suggestions - not just general agreement that I am parenting all wrong!

I feel like I read a lot on here about children needing downtime and space to decompress and generally chill out and we don’t really do that. It’s not exactly for want of trying but I find whenever we do spend time at home for longish periods (and I mean just a few hours) it ends badly with the children falling out and making an unholy mess. Even garden play is tricky as although we do actually have a big garden with lots of toys they don’t really show a huge amount of interest.

I think the problem is I’m not very good at playing with them so maybe I dodge those sorts of activities? I also find the noise and mess overwhelming.

I can often do activities one to one with one child but not with both. I actually feel a bit jealous of friends who can do craft activities or just ‘chill’, mine don’t chill.

am I parenting all wrong?

What do they like doing?

How old are the kids? Things that helped me were, to split the day into segments, so right I'll do 1 hour of x, then snack, then we'll go for a walk, then lunch, then books, then, you get the jist. And secondly for a while I had to treat it like a job, psychologically speaking!

I think it depends on the age of the kids but also what they enjoy and their temperament. When my eldest 2 were little (2u2) we had to be out everyday, I needed adults to speak to and I needed to get out of the house. As they’ve gotten older this has improved, 6.5 & 5, and we can be at home more as they can do Lego, colouring, baking or watch a film. This suits my daughter more than my son though who after a morning at home needs to go out for a walk/run/scoot to get his energy out! But it’s harder work than it should be to relax at home!