Having a hobby makes your time in retirement a lot more fun. It’s a great way to destress and enjoy the moment while learning new things. When you’re looking for a new hobby at home, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve listed the 10 best hobbies for seniors at home in this article. So let’s get started.
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1) Cooking
You can consider cooking as a daily chore in retirement, but you can also make it your new hobby. You need to eat, so why not make the process of preparing a meal a fun experience? You can try out new recipes, bake your own cake and cookies, introduce new ingredients to your meals, remake an old family recipe, etc. You can even explore new cultures and travel to other places in the world all through their cuisine. But where can you learn all these things?
I’ve got the best tip for you: MasterClass. A streaming platform just as easy to use as Netflix, but where you can follow different cooking classes from the world’s best chefs. You don’t need to be an experienced cook to follow classes from Gordon Ramsey to Thomas Keller, Gabriela Cámara, and so many more. With Masterclass, you can learn how to cook Mexican, Italian, French, Japanese, Texas-Style BBQ dishes, and upgrade your cooking skills even if you’re already an experienced cook yourself. And the best part is: with a membership, you’ll have access to all cooking classes (and all the other classes on Masterclass).
2) Gardening
Being outdoors with your hands in the soil is a very healthy hobby to have as a senior. So whether you have a small or big garden at home, do a little gardening each day and you’ll experience many benefits. Because gardening is great for your mental and physical health. It reduces stress, builds stronger muscles, boosts your creativity and your overall mood. And that is why gardening is such a popular hobby amongst seniors.
You can plant flowers to create beautiful scenery, start a vegetable garden or grow a couple of herbs that you can use for your cooking. There are so much many things you can learn within gardening and the man to teach you all about it is Ron Finley. He has an online Gardening Class on MasterClass where he teaches how to create a garden in any home, how to grow your own food, the best time to plant, how to keep houseplants alive, and a lot more. Curious? Check out more information about his Gardening Class here.
3) Writing
A reason for seniors to take up writing as a hobby is to have a legacy for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It’s great to have something to pass on to younger generations.
When you like this hobby idea but are hesitant to start writing because you don’t have any experience or maybe never took a writing class. I’m here to tell you that there are many advantages to start writing at a later stage in life: plenty of time to write, there are no distractions such as a full-time job or kids running around the house, and as a senior, you have a lot of history and life experience to draw from.
And it’s never too late to take a writing class if you want to be better and learn more. And with a Membership to Masterclass you get access to fantastic writing classes from the world’s best writers: Judy Blume, Dan Brown, Billy Collins, James Patterson, Margaret Atwood, Shonda Rhimes, Walter Mosley, and many more. They are all there to teach you every aspect of writing from storytelling, writing fiction, poems, screenwriting, songwriting, etc. All from the comforts of your home and learning at your own pace, time, and device.
4) Reading
Reading is an excellent hobby for seniors because keeping your brain occupied and stimulated improves your memory and helps to prevent dementia according to many studies. And as a senior, you have more time to enjoy a good book, because there are no distractions to finish a couple of extra chapters.
Perhaps you have a stack of unread books you didn’t have the patience and time to read, or when you like to do more reading in retirement you can consider getting a Kindle e-reader. You’ll have access to millions of book titles that are waiting for you.
5) Music
Music has the enormous power to move us emotionally. Music can make you feel happy or sad and it can help you reminisce about loving memories in the past. But it also has health benefits. Whether you listen or play music it’s a great brain exercise. Music can improve your memory, reduce stress, and lower blood pressure. And it keeps your heart healthy through released endorphins in the brain that improves heart health. Therefore a great hobby for a senior, right?
You can get a vintage record player to listen to old records. Go on Spotify and create a playlist with all your favorite songs to listen to at home. You can learn to play a new musical instrument, write a song or try to perfect your pitch. Perhaps you have the courage even to upload a couple of videos of you singing or playing an instrument.
On MasterClass you can follow so many awesome music classes from the world’s greatest. For example, Alicia Keys teaches Songwriting, Tom Morello teaches Electric Guitar, Itzhak Perlman teaches Violin, Reba McEntire teaches Country Music and the list goes on. From learning how to play ukulele, drums and percussion to singing lessons. A Membership to MasterClass gives you acces to all music classes, but also all the othe classes on the platform from cooking, gardening, writing to science, art and business.
6) Arts & Crafts
Get creative with arts and crafts. Working with your hand and creating a piece of art gives you a fulfilling and satisfying feeling. It gives you a sense of meaning that most technologies cannot. You can invite friends over to do new fun art and crafts project every week. So what are great arts and crafts hobbies?
- Painting
- Crocheting
- Woodworking
- Scrapbooking
- Jewelry making
- Diamond painting
- Knitting
- Mosaic
7) Birdwatching
You can connect more with nature through the hobby of birdwatching. You can hang up a bird feeder in your garden, window, or balcony and see the birds fly in and out. And the best part is you can be as involved as you want to be. You can start by feeding birds, identifying your backyard birds, and see how they interact with each other, and even keeping a bird-watching log journal. Birds are all around us so it’s a year-round and inexpensive hobby.
8) Genealogy
If you’re curious about your past and want to know more about your ancestors, you can have genealogy as a hobby. You can research and build a family tree and perhaps write a family history book to pass on to your children en grandchildren. It’s what a lot of seniors love to do.
My Heritage DNA Kit can give you a head start. You discover relatives who share DNA segments, inherited from the same common ancestor. And it can help you find answers about your past and create a family tree in a thorough way.
9) Volunteering
Doing volunteer work is one of the most popular hobbies in retirement. Helping others makes you feel good and gives meaning to your life. It makes you feel fulfilled and that is why so many retirees love to volunteer. It keeps you busy in all ways; socially, mentally, and physically. But you might wonder, can you do volunteer work from home?
Yes, you can. There are all sorts of virtual volunteer opportunities out there. You can search through hundreds of volunteer jobs you can do from home at VolunteerMatch.
10) Games
Do you love to play games? Then your hobby can be all sorts of fun games. Get yourself a Puzzle Book and spent hours on Crosswords, Sudoku, Cryptograms, Word Searches, etc. You can solve a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, do a brain teaser or play video games. The possibilities are endless.
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