climb the walls

Example: “Stuck inside during the snowstorm, the kids were climbing the walls.”

Origin: The image is confinement pushed past its limit: someone shut in a small space too long, restless or bored past the point of sitting still, described as if the only way left to burn off that energy were to scale the very walls holding them in. The figurative use for extreme agitation, frustration, or anxious boredom only became common around 1970, even though the underlying picture of frantic, trapped energy is much older and easily connects to what's now called cabin fever — the specific unease that sets in during prolonged isolation or confinement.