One thing that really helped me was to accept that these behaviours were all normal. Not necessarily naughty or destructive but just part of normal development. Once I realised that, things became a whole lot easier. I even joined in once flinging the laundry powder around and then we cleaned it up together. Good times.

I found that DS1 would only do stuff like that when he was bored. He either wanted me or he wanted something to do. So I kept him busy. I tried to set up stuff the night before by either swapping toys around so they were 'new' ones or using some ideas from this cool website Play at home mom. I joined the local toy library which meant we always had "new" toys to keep him busy.

I'd also try and prepare all of DS1's food for the next day in a lunch box so I wasn't having to have time away from DS1 doing that too.

Life felt a lot like groundhog day for a while, but at least he wasn't being a complete feral because he had more of my attention and interesting things to do. I don't have to do as much of this now as he's older but it really helped when he was going through that stage.