Quick question – what would you do to occupy yourself if you had to spend the weekend at home, and couldn’t leave for any reason? If you’re like most people, you’d probably end up dedicating an inordinate amount of your time to catching up on your TV watching, surfing the web for random bits of trivia and making sure to obsessively log in and out of your social media accounts every 10 minutes like a true, dyed in the wool addict.
If you’re a more enterprising and proactive sort, however, you might decide to fill your time with something productive, whether that means writing a book, painting the next Mona Lisa, or engaging in any number of old-school, home-based hobbies that have little or nothing to do with the digital world.
If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, here are a selection of just those sorts of hobbies that you might enjoy taking up.
Furniture making and upcycling
Once upon a time, it was fairly tricky getting your hands on the raw resources to build your own furniture, or to upcycle existing pieces. Today, thanks to the internet (yeah, not very old-school) and delivery services like Shiply, you can get all the required bits and pieces dropped off at your house with minimal fuss.
Creating your own furniture can be an incredibly fulfilling way of venturing into the world of DIY. You’ll need the right sorts of tools, of course, not to mention some space, and a good selection of books and resources to point you in the right direction.
Once you’ve acquired all of these prerequisites, however, you can fully devote yourself to building a new bookcase for the living room, or upcycling an old wardrobe and turning it into something truly worth taking up space in your home.
Stamp collecting
Stamp collecting may not be the most glamorous hobby in the world, but it can be surprisingly engaging and fun, even in an age where probably fewer people send letters than pretty much ever before (at least, since the widespread introduction of the postal service).
Stamp collecting is an entire art-form in and of itself. There are specialist magazines to read, special books for cataloguing rare stamps, special books for keeping your stamps in, and various paraphernalia for obtaining stamps in the first place, and safely removing them from envelopes and postcards.
Stamp collecting is a very relaxing, therapeutic kind of hobby. Perfect if you end most days exhausted by your day job.
Starting a collection
While stamp collecting is, of course, a form of ‘collecting’, it’s a bit more specific and prescribed than the hobby being outlined here.
Starting a collection involves deciding on a particular type of item that you find especially fascinating, and beginning to collect those items.
This could mean starting a mineral collection, or a knife collection, or a pocket watch collection, or just about anything else you could imagine!
You’ll find that many forms of collection are well-represented by hobby groups, hobby magazines, and so on. Once you feel your collection is well-stocked and organised enough, you might want to get in touch with other enthusiasts to compare notes.
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