Hobbies For Grown-Ups Who Have Little Kids, Little Space, and Zero Time

Photo by Sandie Clarke on Unsplash

Lots of life take lots of energy. Losing yourself in parenting can be essential, amazing, and limiting. Perhaps work is where you give everything and it can be rewarding, endless, and exhausting. Or, maybe it’s grief that you are experiencing now and it is sweeping, relentless, and isolating. Retirement? Underemployment? Health management? Whatever age and life transition you may be in or working through, you might want to start a hobby to build skill, see progress, and put energy into creative expression. It can make the very hard things of life a tiny bit easier.

I started 2022 with a hobby-mindset. The mindset was simply to get one. Get a hobby. Chose one or ten, but see what sticks. It couldn’t be exercise or meditation or other survival tasks, nothing career-related, not travel or sneaky consumerism. Rather, something solely for fun and something to be done at home. Something to practice and to make progress. Something incredibly low stakes so I could be bad at it and no one would be harmed.

Here are some hobbies that can be done in a tiny house, with little money and, for those of you readers with kids, with no babysitter. You could be a:

1. Reader of short novels. My longest and most passionate hobby is reading, but my eyeballs and brain have gone through seasons where they can only handle short books (trial work, migraines, sleep regressions). I love novels. One to try: Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls. What my kids do: read next to me or just continue playing around me.

2. Puzzler of 500 piece puzzles. I shared before how perfect these are for two people in one or two nights. Maybe double that time for a solo puzzler. What my kids do: work on it, too (mileage varies), or are so bored by it they wander away.

3. Art enthusiast, with kids or just yourself. Process-based, open-ended, messy art is where I have landed the last five years. Ink, paint markers, Washi tape, oil paints by accident? I dabble with all of it. Be sure to have an art tablecloth for easiest cleanup. What my kids do: join in.

4. Gardener of anything. A beautiful garden bed, a fleet of houseplants, or just questionable soil you start to amend in your side yard, it can actually all work. Books from the library and some gardening friends and several growing seasons filled with mistakes have helped me learn. What my kids do: catch tomato slugs for pets and dig with a sandbox excavator.

5. Player of an instrument. Did you play an instrument before your Era of No Hobbies? Is there a piano in your living room staring at you as you read this? Have you always wanted to learn an instrument? Do it. I do lessons in my neighborhood but my friend uses YouTube. There are so many options with technology. What my kids do: I have a digital piano with volume control so they, therefore, sleep.

6. Interrupted needleworker. Pick it up, put it down, repeat. There are many options for a handheld project: cross-stitch, embroidery, knitting, crochet. All are good in a house full of chores and kids. I recommend a pincushion you can place out of reach. What my kids do: finger-knit next to me with yarn, ask to sew a stitch, sort the threads by color.

What hobbies do you have? What hobby you would like to start? The smaller the better here!