I’m so cheap that I’ve chosen a hobby (drawing) that costs almost nothing.
Even excellent quality sketchbooks, pencils and pens are negligible in cost.
.
I did have a hobby that was in danger of becoming expensive, so I quit.
(My fellow comic-collectors wanted me to invest in equipment to restore my horde of older comics… and said I really needed to spend 40-60 hours a week meticulously fixing them. Their ploy worked; I sold them my funnybooks.)
I have a friend whose house is chock full of Massive Lego Sets (dozens of rockets and space shuttles, every spaceship from every TV or movie franchise, a Death Star or two, and any building that’s architecturally unique).
Most of those run 3-6 feet tall (his SpaceX First Stage is huge, but basically a grey cylinder; I think his Taj Mahal is life-size).
He’ll proudly boast of the hundreds of hours each model took, but admits there was zero creativity involved: “I was just following instructions”.
[quote=“digs, post:162, topic:1026139”]I
think his Taj Mahal is life-size
[/quote]
Certainly not the size of the actual Taj Mahal.
Darn, I forgot to mention “joking around” as one of my hobbies…
Oops. Sorry
No apology necessary, it was fun banter. And it was your critique of Legos upthread that made me realize why I never got hooked. The skills and the devotion to detail are right up my alley, but the resultant clutter keep me from indulging.
So many hobbies are just following directions. I get enough of that at work, thank you.
I originally got into Lego (only began collecting two years ago) because I could have some cool sets on display for a year or so and then dismantle them and build my own. I have done that a couple of times, but some sets are so nice I want to keep them fully constructed.
So instead of using the pieces from sets to make my own, I started buying piece packs, sometimes specific ones, sometimes bulk packs of random stuff, and making my stuff from those.
These are two different parts of a large diorama I’ve been building for the past year, with all-original designs throughout. I need to get a larger table to put it on, once it’s done it will be about 1m x 1m which is 4x4 standard base plates.
Hah! I draw cartoons, and I didn’t even think of it as a hobby! Pencils and sketchbooks, and polymer erasers. I spend what comes out to less than a coffee at Starbucks every two or three months.
It was a huge decision to move from mechanical pencils to wooden ones a while ago, and invent in an electric sharpener-- it’s very cool-- you can set it to the kind of point you want.
I took a class about 25 years ago in working in colors, just to see if it was for me. Turned out is wasn’t, as far as the degree of self-expression I get from drawing, but it still was really interesting. It was a beginners’ class in colors that assumed you could draw, and just needed to know about materialI’d been on the look-out for a class like that for a long time.
We worked first with chalk, then colored pencils, then watercolors, and then for people who wanted to spend the money, acrylics-- but even then, the teacher was pretty great-- she had canvases that had repairs, minor defects, or the beginnings of painting someone had abandoned which she sold us really cheap, and said just buy red, yellow, blue, black, and white, and don’t buy brushes, because the variety of “application media” was so great, she was going to let us use her stuff until we decided what we liked.
And, wow. You could make an entire hobby of just finding ways of putting paint onto canvas.
Color isn’t for me, except occasionally for emphasis or humor, but I loved that class.
with regards to hobbies, I am somewhat an interesting character (not really, but there you go…)
I had lots of sequential hobbies (so one after the other) - but did never really stick to a thing for a longer time (couple of years). I am interested in “learning it”, and once I reasonably did (never was great at anything, but good in all), I lose interest and become interesting in “learning another thing” …
so, I had:
I did learn a few life-lessions: I now just take up hobbies, that don’t cost a lot, and even within this cost-envelope, y remain on the lower side of things - I especially refrain from purchasing “devices/tools/etc…”
Also I find I nowadays trend towards hobbies that are intrinsically of value, e.g. cooking, esp. making pizzas from scratch … and for the past year or so, my hobby is: COFFEE …
Reflecting the earlier learnings, I figured out that when I purchase green coffee beans (which store w/out problems for a year or so) and roast them myself, I can bypass the sometimes pharmacy-pricing associated with single-origin-coffee.
But what about the price of a coffee-roaster you might ask… hey the internet is your friend - and a couple of years some woman in australia discovered that the crappy-ass Covid-bread-making-machine we all have at home, when coupled with a 10 dollar heatgun, makes for a perfectly nice coffee roaster, if operated by competent hands. This allows me to locally (i’m in LatAm) purchase 5kg of very good coffee for around $60 or so … that is easily a 6-8 month supply.
For the longest time, I used a non-Bialetti mokka can for my daily 2-3 doses of caffeine, and did present myself this x-mas the Cafelat Espresso Robot (somewhat violating my “minimize devices” rule) - also I would not call it inexpensive, either at around $450-500. On the upside they have a proven track record of not breaking ever and being good for 10s of 1000s of cups of espresso:
Makes some of the best espressos you can wish for - again, there is a learning curve - but I am already very happy with my espressos and americanos I am pulling - and even happier that they are really damn cheap (if costed per cup).
I stopped buying any more guitars, which is excellent self discipline. I started playing Magic the Gathering however, and I might have to put the reigns on that, I’m in it about $700 so far in cards. Although doing hobby math, that is equivalent to about only 1 guitar, so maybe I have guilt-space to buy some more…
I’ve been eyeing a 3D printer, so I think that will be my next obsession.
We did beekeeping for about 6 years, before beesting allergy put an end to it. Costs do level out after a couple years when you find your sweet spot for number of hives. We were fortunate to have some bee friends whose hives would often swarm, which they would give to us to replenish our wintertime losses.
I am in the same boat, but still sitting on the sidelines for this reason (guilty of a bit black/white reasoning, but here you go):
It seems that 2025 was the first year where 3dP hit prime-time, particularly the Elegoo centauri carbon, a printer where the XY axis isn’t moved by moving the print-bed but the headers, making for faster/more precise - and most of all: no fuss printing - and the price for this innovation was ridiculous: $300.00
So I am waiting for others to catch up (lots have similiar models in the pipeline) and for a V2.0 to come out - I am giving myself the whole of 2026 for this …
Sounds to me like your hobby is learning stuff. That’s actually a cool hobby, and probably very good for long term mental health, because it suggests a mind driven by curiosity. Associated costs could be all over the map, from free to damn expensive!
That is so cool! Will check more details.
I have a habit of making all my hobbies expensive. Writing fiction? Several thousand dollars in training, workshops, developmental editing, and books. I was in the Story Grid cult for a few years. That got expensive.
Cross-stitch? Shouldn’t be too bad. The current project cost about $120, but I’ve been working on it for over six months and I’m not even half done. However, I can’t stop buying accessories and cross stitch supplies. Floss drops, more floss drops, Q-snaps, stitching stand, this long wooden thing that helps me measure thread when I’m cutting it… I’m running out of things to buy.
Jigsaw puzzles? I have to have the best puzzles, and the best puzzle board, and the best sorting bins, and…
Uh huh.
No you’re not. There’s always more to buy.
My late wife was a skilled and avid knitter. She manufactured magnificent sweaters, shawls, gloves, and the occasional 4- or 6- color blanket at a furious pace.
She quit buying stuff about 4 years before she died. I gave away thousands of dollars of tools and yarn once she was gone. Had she lived to an advanced elderly age, she still would not hsve used every bit of yarn & every tool.
The stores were always full of more & different.
When I was narrowing down my hobbies, part of a downsizing/decluttering project I did, I selected cross stitching as one of them because I determined it wouldn’t take up too much space.
It ended up taking more space than I expected, but if I were a knitter, I know I would be in far worse shape. So far my hobby fits in a few stacked small plastic bins, plus the stitching stand. It’s not that bad, really.
The hobby taking up the most space is puzzles because people keep giving me puzzles as gifts so I’ve got about ten I haven’t even started yet. And I haven’t touched my puzzles in a while.
My brain rotates interests.
Yeah, hence my lack of interest in subgenres of textile arts such as cross-stitch kits with preprinted patterns. Sure, let me push this red thread you sold me through these specific red holes in the printed canvas pattern you sold me. How rewarding. (I have a lot of extremely capable and creative textile-arts friends who do find that more mechanical aspect of counted-thread kit-work relaxing and enjoyable, so take the snark with a grain of salt, but it still doesn’t really appeal to me.)
Precise directions in a knitting or crochet pattern don’t put me off in the same way, for some reason; perhaps having to manage fiber choice, gauge and tension makes it feel more autonomous.
This situation is called “SABLE” (Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy). It’s very common among knitters and other textile crafters!
Calling @JaneDoe42 
