With winter fast approaching, especially up here in Alaska, I thought it would be helpful to discuss 10 indoor hobbies perfect for staying in your home.
1. Yoga, Zumba, Jazzercise
Of course the first suggestion I list is one relating to moving your body! During the winter months, I find it especially important to keep up with exercise to help prevent me from going stir-crazy.
You do not need an exercise studio or yoga studio to get moving indoors. YouTube is a great resource to find teachers and coaches who will lead you through classes of any length, from 20 to 60+ minutes. Boho Beautiful Yoga, Breathe and Flow, and Yoga With Adriene are a few of my favorite online yoga teachers.
Push your coffee table aside, grab an exercise mat, and move your body!
2. Playing an Instrument
Whether you are learning a new instrument for the first time or played in a band since elementary school, connecting with an instrument is a great way to pass the time indoors. There are also believed long-term brain health benefits from this indoor hobby idea.1
YouTube is a great resource to learn the basics about playing your instrument of choice.
Instrument Ideas:
- Guitar
- Piano / Keyboard
- Drums / Drum Pad
- Ukulele
- Bamboo Flute
- Handpan Drum
3. Producing Electronic Music
If physically playing an instrument is not your thing, or you have an injury that is preventing you from playing an instrument, another great indoor hobby is producing music with your laptop.
Whether you are into electronic dance music, “worldly” chanting music, or hardcore drill rap, producing music is a fun way to explore creating your own sounds and beats to any of these genres.
There are tons of music-producing software and tutorials out there, as well as sound samples and loops, to help you get started. I found this spreadsheet from a Reddit post that seems to be helpful in explaining music production basics.
Music production is a great indoor hobby that will help pass the time and exercise the creative parts of your brain.
4. Feminine Dancing
This suggestion is for the ladies out there. (Or I guess anyone who is down to get in tune with their feminine side…)
Learning feminine dancing is a great way to pass the time indoors, especially through long, dark winters like I experience in Alaska. Moving your body in sexy ways is a great means of boosting confidence and overall body appeal.2
I plan to learn fusion belly dancing this winter but also believe pole dancing to be a great art form to learn, Pole not only improves confidence but also provides a great physical workout.
If you choose to go the pole dancing route, portable poles are available to use or you can install a pole in your home. There are plenty of online dance teachers on YouTube who break down fundamental movements.
If you live in Jacksonville Florida, let me know and I’ll send you my friend’s information so you can learn pole from her!
5. Seed Starting
If you already have house plants that survive through winter and all the other seasons, a logical next step in your plant hobby is seed starting.
I attended a free seed-starting workshop in Fairbanks earlier this year and learned so much about this fun indoor hobby. Yes, this hobby has the potential to transition into an outdoor gardening hobby once the weather is warm enough for plants to survive outdoors.
Seed starting is an excellent hobby that includes so many activities such as:
- Taking care of the plants (fertilizing, watering, monitoring light)
- Building shelves for placing the seeds
- Labeling and organizing the seeds
- Building planters to hold the plants once they are moved outdoors
- Determining the layout of the garden or grouping of plants when they transition outdoors
- Harvesting the plants (if planting vegetables)
- Researching plants and attending seed swaps
I have not started seeds yet, since I was a little late to learning about this past year but look forward to attempting a small flower garden next year!
6. Cooking or Baking
And sharing your delicious food with coworkers – yum!
I have a coworker who loves cooking and just this week he shared 6 different chicken recipes with us at work. THEY WERE ALL SO DELICIOUS!
That got me thinking, what a wonderful hobby to have: cooking, baking, and trying out recipes just for the fun of it! You will create wonderful meals to share with loved ones. I also find cooking to be a meditative activity.
If you are interested in diving into this hobby, try using a cookbook or TikTok/Instagram to find interesting recipes to try replicating. I bet there are a ton of food bloggers out there who also have lovely recipes to share.
When I decided I wanted to learn how to cook more than making boring chicken, rice, and veggies, I took to using a cookbook where each meal was associated with a tarot card. My friend gifted me this cookbook as well as a tarot card deck that I used to randomly select a card and create the meal associated with the card. I did this as a challenge to create a new meal once a week for a year and learned SO MUCH over that time. What a fun concept!
7. Quilting
This is a hobby I have not tried myself but admire those who can create such beautiful, useable art with their hands.
Quilting goes far beyond sewing pieces of fabric together and adding stuffing to it. From my understanding, there are ways to create and sew each patch of a quilt based on a drawing or picture you created yourself.
I have a coworker who explained to me a quilt she’s been working on for 5 YEARS!! She designed each of the squares of the quilt and is now sewing each patch before attaching all of the pieces together. I believe the terminology is “patchwork” but will let the internet rabbit hole of quilting help set that straight for you.
If you are interested in this peaceful indoor hobby, search the Internet to see if there are any quilting groups that meet up in your town. It would be lovely to learn from them as you start your own masterpiece.
8. Refurbishing Furniture
All I think about is the show “Flea Marker Flip” that aired on HGTV for a few years. What a fun hobby and potential to make money!
- Estate sales, garage sales, and flea markets are great places to find goods just waiting to be reinvented or refurbished, they are just waiting for you to find them!
- eBay, Craigslist, and Facebook Marketplace are good options to browse for goods online without leaving your home.
This hobby may be best for folks who have extra space in their home to store these goods if you intend to sell them. Otherwise, if you intend to use the items to furnish your home, fun projects await you regardless of the size of your home! Imagine looking at an end table that you painted and engraved with beautiful accents.
I would feel so accomplished and proud if I had a piece like that In my home.
9. Reading
There is a sad statistic from 2022 that less than 50% of adults read a book in the past 12 months.3 I am curious if that percentage is inflated, as well, because who is answering surveys from the National Endowment for the Arts if they do not even read books?! Haha!
Fiction books are great to help improve imagination and lead you into a world outside of your own. If you are not into reading fiction books for pleasure and believe that to be a waste of time, consider reading books that teach you skills or are in the self-help genre.
I use Goodreads to keep track of books I want to read and have read throughout the year. It is so easy to go onto the app and search for a book I hear about in conversation or on a podcast to then add it to an ever-growing list of books to read. And – surprise, surprise – I also like setting a yearly reading goal, I already surpassed my goal for 12 books for this year!
If you want to build a library and own a bunch of the books you read, consider buying books second-hand either online or at local bookstores. I like to rent most of the books I read from the public library.
If you do not have a public library card, GO GET ONE TODAY!
10. Creative Writing
Creative writing is an ideal indoor winter hobby that definitely does not require you to leave your home.
If you prefer to use pen and paper, grab a journal and begin to fill in daily short stories about whatever pops into your head. If you think sharing the story with the world could be fun, write chapters on your computer and create a blog for the story. There are websites that are perfect for sharing your creative work online.
My sister is super into Harry Potter fan fiction (Manacled being her favorite). It is amazing it is that a fan of the series created such an involved story that is beloved by many people around the world.
If you already enjoy journaling, or even sending long text messages to folks, consider creating characters and stories as your indoor hobby. I am a huge advocate for anything that improves creativity and exemplifies self-expression. Perhaps a writing short story is in my future…
10 Indoor Hobbies Ideas
- Yoga/Zumba/Jazzercise
- Playing an Instrument
- Producing Electronic Music
- Feminine Dancing
- Seed Starting
- Cooking or Baking
- Quilting
- Refurbishing Furniture
- Reading
- Creative Writing
If you are thinking about taking a break from Instagram, check out this post to learn more about my decision to leave social media.
I believe independence is key to being happy with yourself. Check out this post on 10 activities you should try doing solo.
- Foster, Aurelia. “Playing a musical instrument good for brain health in later life – study.” BBC, https://www.bbc.com/news/health-68105868. Accessed 5 October 2024. ↩︎
- Pfeiffer, J.L., Sowitzki, S.K., Schäfer, T. et al. Effects of pole dance on mental wellbeing and the sexual self-concept—a pilot randomized-controlled trial. BMC Psychol 11, 274 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-023-01322-z ↩︎
- “Arts Participation Patterns in 2022: Highlights from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts.” National Endowment for the Arts, Oct. 2023, https://www.arts.gov/impact/research/publications/arts-participation-patterns-2022-highlights-survey-public-participation-arts. ↩︎
Could embracing the winter months as an opportunity to hibernate indoors lead to increased creativity and self-discovery? How can introverts make the most of this time for personal growth and reflection through engaging in new indoor hobbies?”,
“refusal
What insightful questions.
I would say winter is an ideal time to stay indoors, be with yourself, and foster personal projects. When the weather is warmer and there is more daylight, I have a strong desire to make the most of that season and be either out in the town or in nature with others. Winter has the opposite effect. There is a draw toward staying indoors and going within.
A great way to make the most of this time is to determine the creative projects or interests you have and prioritize exploring those interests in your daily or weekly schedule. When I am starting a new hobby, I love participating in a 30-day challenge to keep me accountable with actually spending time learning and doing that hobby. There are also social media communities and groups for all sorts of hobbies. Although I am no longer on social media, it was a great resource to have early in my hula-hooping journey.