A counter question to the guy who posted a similar question few hours ago, cause most of the answers weren’t helpful for someone like me, who doesn’t have much money😅.
Hiking can be nearly free especially on beginner trails that don’t require special equipment
Writing is something I hated in school but as I’ve gotten older it can be fun to kinda play god with peoples lives.
Cooking isn’t free but could actually save you money if you eat out a lot.
Writing fiction is so much fun.
When you start writing, you’re in control, but about 1/3 of the way through a longer story, the characters start taking over and leading the way, to the point that if you’re not careful, they’ll lead you astray from the story you want to write, and they’ll start writing their own story--which may or may not be a better story. If you’ve never experienced this, it’s surprising the first time it happens.
Foraging. It costs almost nothing to learn about the plants that grow around you and what you can do with them. I’ve been doing it for about 5 years now, and spent maybe $80 on a good hori hori and $40 on a good mortar and pestle when I wanted to get serious. Neither of those are necessary to forage. A good field guide is something you can order at your local library. The main cost is time studying at home and on the field.
Here’s some amazing pesto I made with wild mustard garlic greens.
And the before picture
I can not recommend the hobby enough. I’m happy to try and answer any questions you might have.
Oh man I got to enjoy a chicken of the woods mushroom for the first time last year and it was amazing. We enjoyed sumac tea all summer and have a bounty of hickory nuts this fall. I made wild riverbank grape jelly from grapes harvested from my mom’s backyard. Definitely need to be careful with ID’ing and never picking something you’re not 100% sure of but it’s liberating and satisfying.
This does sound very compelling, but how did you start?
When I go outside in a place that has plants I try to ID at least one that I don’t know. When I get a positive ID on it, I’ll look it up and sometimes it will have edible or medicinal properties.
I unfortunately live too deep inside the city to try that😅. There’s very little vegetation around.
I’m not sure where you are exactly but you’d be shocked. When I was last in New York I actually took an “Urban Foraging Tour”. They showed us these wild weeds that grow on stoops that apparently make a great tea.
I don’t forage as a hobby so obviously this is all just experience from one two hour tour I took like five years ago but still!
You would be surprised. Dandelion for example is a plant that thrives in cities, is entirely edible, and you can roast it’s taproot into a delicious coffee substitute.
I started out with dandelion actually. I made a whole plant tea out of it heat dried. It entirely transformed the plant into something that smelled delicious, almost this floral toasted honey smell.
Just don’t take from places where a lot of pets get walked, right next to roads, or sprayed. Wash everything and anything you take home throughly, and research research research before you start picking.
Garlic mustard can be great, but you have to get it at the right time. It becomes bitter when the plant starts to mature.
While experimenting with it one time I did something resembling Palak Chaat with some tender young leaves. They fried up beautifully and ended up translucent - like green stained glass - and wonderfully crispy.
Drawing. A pencil, pen, eraser and paper are the type of stuff you could even steal from an office and people wouldn’t bother. Drawing for fun is mostly about just doing whatever or doing caricatures, the latter are great because if it sucks then it’s actually better 😆
Writing. Stories, reviews, fanfics, whatever. You posted here, so you already have everything needed. Literally any working computer will suffice if you prefer a bigger keyboard.
Going out and walking or jogging. Not to any specific place, just literally walking around the place you live, get to visually know the neighborhood. Not fun when it’s too hot outside. Related to walking, bodyweight exercises. Not really fun, but you don’t have to pay anything to workout. Some people make hobbies out of physical exercise, so ymmv.
To add to the last point, you can find a humongous amount of instruction videos for any kind of bodyweight exercise on Youtube. Just start clicking around until you find something that works for you. Yoga or calisthenics might be a good place to start.
To add: if pen and paper aren’t your thing you can create computer art with free programs like Blender. Or you can use something like FreeCAD to design objects that are easier bring into the real world via 3D printing or other machines available at most makerspaces (though those are materials and makerspaces will cost something).
That’s assuming the computer even runs those programs, plenty of budget choices don’t even support OpenGL3.
Chess. You can try Lichess, a free (and open source) website/app to play chess. There’s countless of videos and tutorials on the internet about chess.
Thanks, as a person who has never learned how to play chess, Lichess seems like a good start
Chess.com also has a lot of good stuff in the free tier, like lessons and daily puzzles.
Just FYI lichess has infinite puzzles, I love doing them.
And then if you pay money, you can have the full lichess experience!
That website (hereafter referred to as the green pawn website) is very scummy and has ties to gambling. The green pawn website also uses their hoard of played games for their own private analysis, but doesn’t let anyone else do it. Lichess, on the other hand, allows anyone to use the dataset and this has allowed some very interesting things, such as “what is the rarest move” statistics, to be featured in blog posts or YouTube videos.
No hate if you use it, but don’t encourage new players to use the green pawn website. Lichess is leagues better.
reading.
Yes! Libraries are free, and awesome. Unless you don’t have one near you. Even then, used books can be had pretty cheap, and you can often find ebooks given out free or cheap. Plus stuff like Gutenburg and Standard Ebooks for older texts. Doesn’t take long to build up a stack of books you have no hope to finish reading!
I have a very weird relationship with reading. I either am not reading one, or I’m obsessively reading one. I’ve completed not so small books in 2 days, like project hail Mary. I completed animal farm in a day.
Great suggestion, but I need better time management while reading books.
Geocaching
Being in a city, there could be lots of caches near you.
I haven’t seen Cooking, Baking and even Gardening on the list.
These are hobbies that saved you serious amount of $$.
Making food from scratch is always cheaper and healthier.
If you don’t have much space you can have a tiny vertical garden (pallet) or just a few spiceso n your counter.
And technically growing weed to smoke is gardening and also saves money (tho I don’t know first hand, I don’t partake).Edit: forgot about: hand sewing and hand embroidery, crochet and knitting. You can fix up clothes so they last longer - and you can spruce up existing clothes also.
Gardening can be so expensive! I have a big fruit orchard and a vegetable/herb garden, I have a well and don’t pay for water, and I have my own compost system, and I chop and drop and prune my fruit trees to maintain keep them within reach. I get a free load of wood chips annually that I use for mulch, and it takes me 3 days of backbreaking work to install it all.
I still spend hundreds annually just on soil to top off the vegetable/herb gardens. Then there’s fertilizers, pest control, lady bugs to control aphids, mesh bags to cover my grapes and figs so birds don’t eat them all (they still get most of my berries). I don’t account for mowing and weed whacking as charging them barely makes a dent in my electric bill, but trimmer line and sharpening/replacing blades is another cost. Weed barrier, shade fabric, trellises, I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of other things.
If you have a couple small raised beds you use for herbs and maybe a small tomato plant, it can be relatively cheap, but the average person will not save on grocery bills by gardening.
The exception is herbs! Don’t buy that $7 bunch of mint from the grocery store, just cut a small stem and throw in the bottom of your shopping cart and pretend you don’t notice it, when you get home throw it in a water cup and give it a few days to root, move it to soil and now you have free mint for life. Same with most herbs. Save your green onion bottoms and do the same with those, don’t but a bunch every time you need a few leaves.
But that’s not much of a hobby on its own, as soon as you start gardening for a hobby, it starts getting expensive.
move it to soil
soil in a pot. don’t plant mint in the ground unless you enjoy pranks on yourself.
Ha! It’s true, it’s a hardy spreader that refuses to die, use a pot unless you know what you’re doing.
But it’s also very easy to cut back or pull out in huge sections if you let it overgrow. Or just weed wack it every now and then.
I don’t care for lawns, so I let it grow as ground cover in a bunch of spots, it looks and smells great!
I even plant it under some trees I have in raised beds (dry loving trees in really wet soil), it uses the excess water, and it acts like a living mulch.
But yes, you should be careful where it’s planted, it’s pretty invasive and can overwhelm some of your other plants if you let it go wild.
i used to have these arguments with my dad about clover. i love clover. he loves grass.
my favorite park growing up was not a fancy park. it was up in oregon near my grandparents’ house. the “grass” was clover and that’s part of why i love it so much.
Mint is eternal.
i boil a large handful of lemon balm (it’s a type of mint) each week (i like stink pots okay). i have tried to kill our lemon balm through overuse. I’m pretty sure that patch of plant will outlive me.
I did the mint idea once… The spider mites came with it killed my basil. You can call it karma. :D
yeah even with the increase cost in groceries if you buy the elements for cooking and baking the material stretches way further than ready made food. and you can learn as you go.
All great suggestions! They definitely will have a huge learning curve in practicing their new skills but the time to skill ratio pays off eventually, and you are investing in yourself which is a priceless
healthier
I love baking biscuits but is a good gateway to moving to baking bread… and space cake.
I love going on hikes or nature walks. Some great free apps are Merlin (for identifying bird calls) and Seek (for identifying plants and animals). All completely free aside from getting to to trail, but even in city parks it can be pretty fun. A good pair of binoculars is a great addition if you have the $$.
I see binoculars at thrift shops all the time for the price of a semi-fancy coffee. Just make sure the lenses are clear and they focus correctly (sometimes the optics are messed up).
Definitely. Also, lots of local birdwatching groups or chapters of the Audubon Society that host pretty frequent outings. Most are free or pretty cheap. Then you have lots of experienced people to ask questions and make friends. Check Facebook or your local photography store flyer posts.
masturbation
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OP asked for free things that are fun. I don’t see how masturbation is “fun”.
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☺️ At least 1 who understood it was a joke 😘
You again Cousin?
Running costs a pair of shoes every now and then and extra laundry detergent but otherwise free. Like any other hobby you absolutely can spend tons of money on it but it’s not required.
Runkeeper is a free app where you can log down your runs but a casio watch with stopwatch is good enough if you know the distance.
Also, contrary to what a lot of people think you don’t have to push yourself, you can just be easy running (chill jogging) and still make massive gains in endurance, speed, physical health and mental health. Depending on your starting point brisk walking can be sufficient to get started and then transition to “let me just jog a bit” when you feel like it and still have massive gains.
You can even combine it with other hobbies like audiobooks, music and/or podcasts.
Running feels to me like “cleaning the pipes” of the body that’s relaxing and makes the remainder of the day a bit more enjoyable.
I would have started running a lot sooner if someone just told me that it’s actually fun to go slow. Now my slow is my old fast.
Yeah, a lot of people don’t realise that if running is not enjoyable then they’re putting way more effort than necessary.
Check out your local library! They have books of course, which can open up all sorts of new hobbies, but modern libraries also can have computers, free classes, workshop and maker spaces, tool borrowing, and sometimes even video games and the like. My local one even has free tickets to museums and the zoo!
If you want something free/cheap as hell, take up drawing. You don’t need fancy art supplies, just a pencil and paper. Look up proper drawing classes and books and get awesome at sketches!
Ours has some board games too, including some fun ones that can be played with others or solo.
My wife has been crocheting up a storm this past week. You do need yard and hooks, but as far as hobbies go, it’s pretty cheap.
I’ve been crocheting too! Making a huge granny square blanket. Easy, can zone out or watch/listen to stuff while I do it. It’s kind of cathartic.
I have a lot of friends who knit. Some of them get wool from other friends or bargain bins while others will buy lots of nice wool, which can get rather expensive. Though I still think as a hobby its sound and fair to peend some money, especially since you usually get something usable out of it.
Hiking, i just have to be there, the rest is free.
Hiking definitely is a simple hobby with a lot of exploring and experiencing fresh air. They only qualm I have is with accessibility, in the sense that you are required to own a car to drive out to parks and trails. Cars are a huge money pit and break down constantly, I wish I could get a bus from downtown to a state park and it would take less than 45 minutes.
Depending on where you live, interesting places could be pretty close. When I was new in my city, I sometimes took a tram or bus to the most remote stop, and just picked a direction to walk from there. Obviously exercise some common sense, and it won’t be the “scenic” route for the bs social media pictures, but it can be a pretty rewarding adventure.
Definitely an idea! There’s so many parks in my city but in different neighborhoods. I should ebike to them and park it and walk, bird watch, vibe (I just bought my first shrooms to try, so excited to do on my day off on Friday)
I’m assuming that you have done the recommended reading, if not, do it, seriously. Could be the difference between best and worst day ever.
Yeah that’s the caveat, you just have to be there but the “being there” part is most likely an expensive one. And the best trail with great view is usually very much in the middle of nowhere, so very unlikely there will be a public transport going there. Still, there’s no reason for no public transport going to the green space within the city.
…
Though, proper hiking shoes do make a big difference and are expensive.
But you can definitely start walking in nature for free. Just be warned that you will enjoy it and want to do more challenging trails, which will require at the very least proper shoes.
Hiking with some geocaching is great
From a similar post recently:
Inexpensive, and little setup, with no steep learning curve?
Off the top of my head:
- singing
- drawing
- playing a tin whistle
- dorodango
- dexterity games (card flourishes, astrojax, yoyo, pen spinning, etc.)
- reading
- kumihimo
- customising things with paint markers
- yoga
- whetstoning
- writing (prose or poetry)
- journaling/journalism
- cross stitch/embroidery
- jelqing
- rock/object balancing
- meditation
- knife throwing
- macramé (using beading floss)
- playing the spoons
- whittling
- eating
- scrimshaw
- nålbinding
- henna tattooing
- primping
- cloudgazing
- looking at fucking everything through a high mag loupe
- tarot divination
- contact juggling
- kefir making
- key duplication by hand
- sleeping
- hiking
- floccinaucinihilipilification
- origami
- talking to nearby friendly looking strangers
- polishing
- cleaning
- caligraphy
- drugless hallucination
- soapbox public speaking
- zen gardening
- guerilla gardening
- pitch ear training
- ‘easter egg’ hiding
- local botanical/ecological studies
- flint knapping
- home/interior design (as long as you don’t actually buy anything)
- knolling
- marble running
- solo RPGs like ‘Alone Among The Stars’ (okay this one wasn’t technically off the top of my head. I couldn’t remember the name, so I looked it up.)
This list is gold. But you’re missing one thing:
Commenting lists of free hobbies on Lemmy
drugless hallucintion
is this just using your imagination or something more specific?
There a number of breathing practices that claim to be a “DMT release.” Like you have free drugs inside you already, might as well, right?
As others have said, yes, it’s a thing, but for more info, Douglas Rushkoff put out a book on it a few years back.
Shoplifting can be both fun and profitable
