Older adults need community, and a great way to build community is by picking up hobbies. Of course, these solutions are not going to work for everyone, this is going to be dependent on your mobility. But even if you have mobility issues, there are online groups for a lot of hobbies, especially for crafting hobbies. There also may be local free meetups in your area. Check your local library for events, they usually have a ton of hobby-based events.
Gardening
I may be biased here because I know some avid gardeners (although I myself could kill a cactus) but gardening is actually recommended for exercise by the American Heart Association. I discovered that while researching this post. If mobility is an issue, you can also use raised beds or window garden boxes. You do not have to plant in the ground if you don’t want to, and there a lot of free resources available on what to plant and when.
Painting
This is going to require more fine motor controls than the previous suggestion, but there are lots of adaptions people can make to still participate in the arts and crafts while dealing with mobility issues. There are adaptive tools. Older people can paint sitting, which would make it appealing. It’s also a great hobby to do with your grandkids. If you want to learn more about adaptive tools, Renee Fabian wrote a great post about it titled “How to Adapt Your Favortie Crafts if Your Mobility is Limited” for The Mighty.
This post is longer than I had originally anticipated, so I am going to talk about this more tomorrow! Please leave a comment below if you would like to see a post specifically about adaptive craft tools, because that is certainly a rabbit hole that I have fallen down.
