Hobbies for Women: 100+ New Hobby Ideas for the New Year

Hobbies are for everyone but if you’re a woman (especially if you’re a mom), it’s easy to let your hobbies and interests go in favor of your family’s needs. Let’s explore a master list of hobbies, made with women in mind, to help you get out of your comfort zone in a good way.

Why Start A New Hobby?

1. Identity – Hobbies force you to explore and engage in activities outside your children. Hobbies can help you feel like you!

Even if you’re including the kiddos in your hobby, your family is engaged in something that you enjoy and choose to do rather than participating in a child-centric activity.

I could write a whole post on the child-centrism (<<< that’s a word now) that permeates our culture, but I’ll spare you. Suffice it to say that your children will leave home one day. Make sure you’re continuing to develop as a person and cultivating interests in preparation for their departure. Looking into new hobby ideas is a great place to start!

2. Stress Relief – Whether you’re pounding the pavement for miles or just tuning out the noise of the world with your crafting project, you can decompress by engaging in one or more activities in my master list of hobbies for women. Most of us are searching for more work-life balance or a break from young children. An enjoyable hobby is a great tool for finding both.

3. Enrichment – Hobbies are a great way to grow yourself as a person. Learning new things, broadening your social circle, and getting some much-needed exercise, all contribute to your physical and mental health. Even if you try something from this list of hobbies for women, then decide it isn’t for you, you still reaped those benefits!

How To Find A Hobby

Know Yourself – Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Detail-oriented or more of a big-picture person? Physical or cerebral? Outdoorsy or a homebody? Do a little soul-searching to find one of the best hobbies for you.

Be Realistic -Before my kids were born I enjoyed horseback riding lessons. I don’t own a horse or have enough space or money to maintain one, and the closest source of western riding lessons is an hour’s drive from my home.

As much as I enjoy horseback riding, the pursuit of it would be more stressful than it’s worth during this season of life. Choose a fun hobby that won’t put a strain on your time or your wallet.

Assess your current needs – Are you out of balance or neglecting a certain area in your life? If you tend to be “all work and no play” maybe you need to choose a new hobby purely for fun without worrying about acquiring a new skill. Just do something for the joy of it for once.

If you have a sedentary lifestyle, maybe you need to work at finding a hobby for your physical health no matter how much you’d rather take up crochet. If you’re young and newly launched as an adult you may want to choose a practical hobby that will help you over the course of your life.

Master List of Hobbies

Below are 120+ hobby ideas for women broken down by category that will show you how to find new hobbies or revisit some old ones. New hobbies are added all the time so leave a comment letting me know of any cool hobbies I might have overlooked. Now let’s find the perfect hobby for you!

Creative Hobbies

• Scrapbooking (digital or paper)
• Junk Journaling – This cheap hobby is all the rage in the UK and has made its way to the US. If you loved scrapbooking in its heyday, you’ll love junk journaling. Give those old scrapbooking supplies a fresh spin! One of the best ways to get started is to create from actual junk mail, paper scraps, envelopes, and old scrapbooking supplies. Then you can invest in more supplies if you decide you like it.
• Photography – Phone camera quality has increased so much in the past few years that you won’t need to purchase a DSLR or special lenses to get started taking great photos. Photography is one of the most popular hobbies which makes it easy to learn about.
• Crochet – Learn in an hour? Hello, kid’s nap time!
• Knitting – Knitting is for those who want a bit more of a challenge than crochet offers.
• Jewelry making
• Cake Decorating
• Metal Stamping  You can find stamping blanks at your local craft store but my favorite things to stamp are vintage metal spoons. Just make sure they are silver-plated as stainless is too difficult to make an impression with unless you invest in special metal stamps.
• Journaling- This hobby is great for your mental health too. The best place to start is…to just start. Literally, start writing anything and everything that comes to mind without editing yourself. You can throw it away without reading if it makes you feel better. Just start!
• Blogging – It might just turn into more than a hobby if you aren’t careful. Ask me how I know!
• Soap making
• Calligraphy
• Musical instruments – 
• Needle Felting – this has gotten popular in recent years with even our small local library having several how-to books.
• Coloring – Check out my list of free adult coloring pages to get started without purchasing an adult coloring book.
• Flower Arranging
• Nail art
• Cooking – We all have to eat! Perhaps the best thing about this hobby is that you won’t be accumulating clutter since all your projects are consumable. Just don’t get to wild with your cake pan collection and you’ll be alright.
• Woodworking
• Quilling – I enjoyed this as a kid and had a mom and aunt who enjoyed it in the ’70s that could both help me with it.
  I’ve noticed quilling is making a comeback with a modern twist and I look forward to teaching it to my daughter.

Quilling Starter Kit

• Sewing
• Candle making
• Painting
• Quilting
• Sushi Rolling
• Cardmaking
• Needlework
• Home Decorating
• Makeup
• Pottery – Look for a pottery shop in your local area that offers classes so you don’t have to invest in expensive equipment right away.
• Cookie decorating
• Woodburning
• Towel origami or napkin folding – I have the towel animal book. So fun!
• Latte Art
• Interior Design
• Furniture refinishing – Local garage sales and Facebook Marketplace are great places to find old furniture to practice on and experiment with design.
• Hairstyling
• Upcycling
• Origami
• Drawing
• Embroidery – Note that this is one of the most affordable hobbies for women if you are the crafty type. Embroidery floss and needles are cheap and once you get the hang of it, you can embroider on lots of different things like thrift store finds or fabric remnants that are on clearance.
  Embroidery is the next thing on this list of hobbies for women that I’m personally taking up, and I’ve been using YouTube videos like the one below to help. 

Outdoor Hobbies

• Horseback riding
• Fishing
• Boating
• Frisbee Golf
• Target Shooting
• Geocaching – This is the GPS I use for hiding caches
• Bird watching
• Astronomy
• Gardening
• Snorkeling
• Scuba Diving – I did this and I’m hooked! A good place to start is to look for a local dive shop, even if you live hours from the coast. There are likely quarries, lakes, and even aquariums where the locals go to train and teach. Then you can spend your next beach vacation actually diving instead of getting certified.
• Surfing
• Kayaking
• Shelling
• Homesteading
• Hunting
• Metal Detecting
• Archery – You know you want to be like Katniss!
• Camping 
• Beekeeping

Physical Hobbies

• Running – As cheap as a decent pair of shoes. Choose to run in your neighborhood or a local park instead of paying for a gym membership or buying a treadmill. Use the C25K (Couch To 5K) app to get started.
• Yoga – If you like to be social, yoga classes abound at gyms, churches, and community centers. I prefer to load up a Yoga with Adrienne video before bed and close the day with her.

• Zumba
• Dance
• Golf
• Hiking
• Biking
• Body Building
• Self-defense
• Tennis
• Rock climbing
• Urban Exploration <<< I so want to do this with Hubs. The closest we’ve gotten is an abandoned gondola house and tracks at a local park.
• Crossfit
• Swimming
• Skiing
• Snowboarding
• Martial Arts
• Spelunking
• Fencing

Social Hobbies

• Line Dancing
• Square Dancing
• Volunteering – This can be a good hobby to make new friends around a shared interest. Do you love animals? Volunteer at the animal shelter. Do you have a passion for the arts? Offer your free time to a local theater group or non-profit.
• Historical reenactment
• Travel
• Improv
• Bowling leagues
• Church choir
• Tabletop Roleplaying Games – It’s not limited to Dungeons and Dragons anymore and it’s not just for high school geeks. There are hundreds of RPGs you can play with dice, boards, and the power of your and your friends’ imaginations.
• Karaoke
• Book Club – Meet new people and share your favorite books.
• Bingo 
• Pool
• Paintball
• Cards (Bridge, Poker)
• Face Painting – It’s a great idea to share this one with your community at special events like fairs and craft shoes
• Stand-Up Comedy – Thanks to social media, you can do stand up in non-traditional settings. Don’t believe me? Check out TikTok.

Intellectual Hobbies

• Genealogy
• Learning a New Language – A foreign language online course one of the easiest ways to get started and there are many options available. Once you’ve learned all you can, immersion will be key to proficiency.
• Chess – Checkers is almost beyond me so I really want to try this “no-stress chess” method.
• Meditation – Something we can all benefit from. If you’ve tried meditation in the past without success, investigate some of the different kinds of meditation out there (or its close cousins.) Maybe you’d benefit from guided meditation, hypnosis, shamanic drum journeys, or ASMR instead. Michael Sealey’s YouTube channel is my absolute favorite for guided meditations. I’m pretty sure I haven’t stayed awake for an entire one though so listen during the day to get your meditation on, or at night as a cure for insomnia.

• Sudoku – Boost your brain function with a book of these fun puzzles.
• Crossword puzzles
• Jigsaw puzzles – I am super particular about puzzles, and these are my favorite brand.
• Writing – You could start a blog. 🙂 If you aren’t driven to monetize everything you’ve ever enjoyed like I am (I’m working on it. Sigh.) just begin a daily journaling practice. You can even find free journaling prompts online to get you started and you’ll improve your writing skills at the same time.
• Board Games – You can play board games at home with your family, at local board game cafes, and at some parks if you live in a large city.

Other Hobby Ideas

• Dog training
• Preparedness – There are whole prepper communities out there, some of them especially for women.
• Crystals
• Antiquing
• Thrifting – The best part is never knowing exactly what you’ll find!
• Tarot – Even if you don’t subscribe to new age beliefs or “woo-woo”, tarot can be a wonderful hobby for tapping into your own intuition with nothing religious or supernatural required.
• Aromatherapy
• Couponing – It’s a good way to save money and give back to charities in your community by donating from your excess. Team up with other couponers online through Reddit, Facebook Groups, or just engaging on a creator’s coupon haul YoutTube videos.
• Massage
• Video Games – I recommend Skyrim because I’m nerdy like that. If your kids’ gaming console controllers frustrate you as much as they do me, try playing on your PC instead. There’s less to learn and think about as far as controlling movement goes. There are fewer buttons to memorize too.
• Magic Tricks
• Wine Tasting
• Feng Shui

Need a few more hobby ideas for women? Let this over-60 community inspire you with their 68 ideas

Hobbies for Women of All Ages

This list of hobbies for women hopefully inspired you with some great hobby ideas for women! Which will you choose?

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