I enjoy doing outdoor activities like visiting parks, but it is a bit cold for that at the moment. A lot of indoor activities get pretty expensive, but I have in the past found a few free building tours and similar which are really good.
I’d love to hear about things everyone else enjoy doing that don’t cost too much, and any resources you use to find activities.
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Go to the library and browse the books and magazines. They hold regular activities as well. Last time I was there they had an African choir singing. It was excellent!
I read a lot, and write… but obviously those aren’t active per se.
Are you only looking for things that are active?
Not so much active as out of the house. It’s far too easy for me to spend most of my time at home and not engage in new things, so I try to get out and do something out of my normal routine on a regular basis.
I love to do a big cookup. Last night I cooked up some butter chicken and lamb korma. Gave us last nights dinner plus 7 meals in the freezer. If you gotta cook anyway why not make a bit extra and freeze it?
Bake. Trying the fancy stuff can eat up your whole day. Ann Reardon is a national treasure.
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Sketching - mechanical pencil and Officeworks art pad - costs about $15 to get going.
Running/jogging - up to a few hundred for shoes, but they last at least a year or two
Most of my hobbies are ones that can be very expensive, but don’t have to be. I’ll start with a couple that I do this time of year even though they’re outdoors.
I’m big into running. Good running shoes can run you a lot of money, but you can get a pretty cheap entry-level pair and keep healthy without any ongoing cost. Save yourself that expensive gym membership. It’s hard to get out the door in winter, but once you do it’s a great experience because you don’t end up quite as drenched in sweat as you do in summer. As @Ilandar mentioned, Parkrun is available as a free race every week if you want to have a benchmark to test yourself against, or want a good social opportunity. It’s 7am in Qld though, not 8am. I know NSW is 8am, but outside of those two states I don’t know, so check your local races’ websites.
Photography. If you’re really into it you’ll probably eventually want a DSLR or interchangeable-lens mirrorless, plus some lenses, but you can do a lot of stuff with just your phone, if you already have a decent phone. Sports and wildlife photography will suffer the most without better gear, but landscapes, cityscapes, candids of people and a bunch of other styles rely much less on the technical capabilities of higher end gear, and proportionally more on just composition, which a phone can do equally well. (You just gotta git good.) You can rug up in your warmest clothes because there’s no need to be moving around very quickly most of the time (again, unless you do sports photography). Or you can explore creative ways of taking photos of things in your own house for a more deliberate artistic expression.
Since you were mainly asking about indoor activities, the obvious classic answer is video gaming. Yeah you can buy half a dozen new games every time there’s a Steam sale and run them on the latest and greatest hardware. But you don’t have to. I’ve pretty much only been playing 2 games over the last 4 years: Age of Empires 2 and Age of Empires 4. They run great on my computer which was a moderately powerful gaming PC when I built it in 2017. AoE is a great game because you can have a blast just messing and doing campaigns or beating the AI, or you can take it very hardcore serious on the 1v1 ranked ladder, or you can enjoy it with friends via the ranked team game ladder or by doing teams against the AI. I do all of these depending on my mood.
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I love my treadmill. It’s a huge upfront cost, but cheap-as after that. Now, watching TV/Movies is not something to feel guilty over.
Watching a movie while walking will see you do 12,000 - 15,000 steps - twice an average adult step count. It’s great for your body. I don’t even notice that I’m exercising.
$20 will get you Procreate Pocket on your iphone and a basic stylus from Big W. (Use HiPaint for android which is free with in app purchases.) No need for any other art supplies or equipment. It’s $10 if you draw with your finger.
I don’t have any streaming services so I watch YouTube. They’re being greedy gits and blocking access after 3 videos to make you either pay or turn your adblockers off - I’ve been sucking it up and just tolerating ads but might use Brave just for YouTube as it gets rid of them without adblockers. (Nb. It’s a Chromium based browser and I’ve heard they’re bad for privacy.) I heard about alternatives like Piped for android etc but haven’t used it.
If you get the pots sorted without too much cost container gardening can be fairly cheap. Try secondhand pots or recycled containers.
I used to craft but burned out on it hard.
