10 Low Budget Daily Activities To Enjoy In An Everyday Setting

It can be hard to find something to preoccupy yourself with on an average day, much less on a low budget, but it certainly is not impossible. Here are ten fun, easy to access hobbies that you don't need to break the bank to do. You can even do them without having to commit yourself to the television or computer. These fun habits will help keep you occupied, happy, and most importantly, on a good budget.

10. Bake the Day Away

At first, baking may not seem like an immediately cheap or available activity. It is easy to think that it is just cheaper to buy a pack of muffins rather than all the ingredients to make a batch of muffins. But a baked dozen of muffins will only take a small amount of the initial baking supplies you buy-long term, the amount of flour in one bag will provide multiple afternoons of baking!

Baking is particularly fun because it will provide delicious food that you can give away to both friends, family, and even co-workers when you feel confident enough in your skills!

9. Chronicle Your Thoughts and Dreams in Journals

Chronicling your experiences and thoughts can not only be a low-budget way to exert creativity, but it also can be good for your mental wellbeing. Journalling helps get out negative feelings that can't be healthily or properly expressed elsewhere. It can also give the mind a venue where it can explore the creativity just dwelling under the surface.

You could write a short story, or you could just let out some frustrating thoughts. If you have particularly vivid dreams you could share them as well. Either way, all you need is a pen and a notebook. 

8. Pick up a Pencil and Draw

One of the most important things to remember about drawing is that there is no such thing as talent. It's practice and skill that makes an artist good, and the best way to put that principle into practice is to turn drawing into an everyday hobby. It is advisable to start off with easy, cheaper materials when you first begin and move onto more expensive material as you go on. Even then, though, a practical set of good art pencils can be bought for only around six to ten dollars. 

To begin learning to draw, all you have to do is start. Even if it's a hobby where you draw on lined paper or printer paper, exert that creativity and excel. 

7. Take a Leisure Walk Or a Leisure Run

Walking around is one of those activities that, just reading it, sounds a little too mundane to really be a hobby. In reality, though, walking around can be something so much bigger than just going to and fro. It can be an activity of exploration. Walk around the area you live in, and you'll find new places that you hadn't even known existed so close to you. As a bonus, it's that little bit of extra exercise that helps you through the day. 

If you seek a more exercise-heavy regime for your activities, then what you may be looking for might actually be jogging. You will get the outdoor activity that you are hoping for, while also putting in a larger effort to help stay in shape. Either method is a win-win for the person doing it. 

6. Learn a Foreign Language

You don't necessarily need to go to a college to pursue an interest in a foreign language. Nowadays, there are all sorts of phone apps, online programs, and even books you can find in the library to help you expand yourself. Programs such as DuoLingo offer free lessons. Other programs, such as Babbel or Rosetta Stone, offer monthly memberships for as low as $6.99.

Even if the digital doesn't sit with you, there are always still books to buy on Amazon for a variety of languages. Check your local library to see what they have to offer as well--there's always a possibility that what could cost you money sits free in your library. 

5. Participate in Mindfulness and Meditation

There is nothing better to invest yourself in than mindfulness. With the chaos of everyday life, it is always a good idea to sit down and meditate for a bit. A Zen Temple in Japan shared with the writer once a methodology to focus the mind in meditation--the assumption of the lotus position, and a focus on your breathing as it circulates in your nose, through your lungs, and back up through your mouth. Focus on that cycle, and nothing else. 

This is a good way to deal not only with stressful situations but to dedicate yourself to defined action on a daily basis. Keep in mind that the lotus position is a little challenging to assume for some people and that you should not force a full lotus. There is nothing wrong with simply assuming a half lotus. 

4. Sing Your Heart Out

Can you sing well? The actual question is: does it matter? Singing is fun! Hooking up your headphones or speakers and singing along to your favorite songs. Set up full playlists of songs that just have that sound that you love to sing with. Belt it out, and you'll feel pretty good by the time it rolls out. 

Be sure to stay hydrated, because singing can make the throat pretty dry. Make sure to also be polite to those you live near--keep it in the bedroom, not in the living room where everyone is trying to read.

3. Snapshot Your Life With Photography

Okay, you must be saying. There is no way that photography could be a cheap hobby to enjoy. Cameras are expensive to buy, especially ones that work well and have a variety of good functions. Except we're living in the 2020s now, and photography is at the fingertip of any person who has a phone. It may not be a two-hundred-dollar camera full of effects, but the quality of phone cameras is better than they've ever been. 

Find what interests you--people, nature, animals--and start exploring unique ways to capture them with your phone camera.

2. Play Ball With Yourself or With Friends

While many ball sports can be competitive and team-based in nature, that doesn't mean they necessarily are restricted to only that. With a basketball, you can gain time shooting hoops and dribbling a ball on your own, or playing one on one with a friend. With a soccer ball, you can kick it around and combine the ball activities with some running activities. A football can be thrown around with friends, or to practice your own aim. 

There are some ball sports, like baseball, that are restricted to team activity alone. That doesn't mean that playing ball isn't something you can't enjoy on your own. Most courts and fields are public, so all you need is the ball itself, which you can get at most major retail stores at very low costs. It's great exercise and kind to the wallet. 

1. Watch and Identify the Birds of Your Area

Birds are great. You can spend hours watching them and enticing them. Most birds won't trust you, of course, but setting up a couple of cheap birdfeeders with tasty seeds will help them get over their apprehension fairly quickly. If you live in an area where it's possible, you can even set up feeders for hummingbirds using specialized birdfeeders and sugar-water solutions that are as easy to make as boiling sugar in water. 

Little birds are like a little circus show all their own. They fight, they cuddle, they make daring maneuvers. You can make them your newest hobby by putting together a place for them to meet, and picking up a guide on birds to help identify the species.

With all that in mind, there's so much to do in an everyday setting. It may not seem big and loud, but it is sweet and contained. Everyday hobbies are the things that get you and me through the day--here's hoping that you might find interest in one of these.