It’s not free, but you have to pay for it no matter what, so it kinda is, but cooking. Everyone should learn the basics of navigating a kitchen and the basic terminology.
Singing and dancing are both learnable free. Art in general tends to be cheaper. Usually anyway.
Intellectual skills are all fair game, there’s wide availability online. You need to start with Information Literacy though, to kinda unlock the rest. Otherwise you’ll waste too much time on bullshit.
Can you expand on what you mean by information literacy?
Rather than try myself, I’ll let a bunch of school teachers and librarians do it instead. They’re better than I am.
This is an animated site for teaching you how to tie different knots.
With a piece of string and perhaps a few wooden dowels, you can teach yourself a variety of useful knots for different needs.
Thank you for this rabbit hole.
Next time something breaks, try repairing it. Pull it apart and look for whats broken, google if you need info or ideas on fixing the problem, and go for it. Worst case scenario you can’t fix something that wasn’t working, best case scenario you’ve saved something from the scrap pile. Either way you’ll have a little bit of knowledge you didn’t already, maybe some skills
Unless it has to do with electrical wiring or anything dangerous. Part of learning to repair is knowing your limits!
Some things are very dangerous even though for inexperienced they might not seem so. Case in point: the microwave. It has a powerful capacitor and if you try taking it apart, it might shock you even when disconnected from power
Adding to that, capacitors can take a very long time to discharge. They can still do serious damage after not being connected for months
Lear how to cook. Just grab a simple online recipe, a bottle of your beverage of choice and try cooking something. It’s a really simple and useful skill acquire.
Recently i picked up an electric smoker and oh boy it’s been life changing. If you want to be the “cook” in your family this is the easiest way.
Take your meat of choice and smoke it. Make sure to tell everyone how long it took to smoke so they know to tell you it tastes good
I approve!
The best thing for home smoking is electric- best control, set it & forget it.
Agree. The number of people I know who “don’t” cook blows my mind. 75% of my repertoire takes less than 30 minutes of involvement to cook. It’s cheaper, healthier, and a great zen thing that’s totally different from my day job.
For those trying to get started, do a meal kit that involves cooking, and start there. Not having to buy ingredients or plan things out makes it less intimidating.
do birds fly? do ducks duck?
Learn a language. It’s a great thing and you can easily do it instead of browsing social medias while traveling. I started with japanese about 5 months ago and can understand some phrases of native speakers already.
Nihongo difficult desu
ええ、難しいだ。でも、日本語が大好き。
If you have a patch of soil with good sun exposure you can learn how to grow your own food. It’s not free but you can be very thrifty while doing it. Huw Richards has published a nice book on the cheapest ways to garden.
Even in a pot on a balcony you can grow a blueberry bush. They’re pretty hardy, nice looking, no thorns, the flowers are good for pollinators, and you’ll be able to pick and eat fresh berries. One little bush won’t produce enough at one time for a pie, but at least they don’t get moldy like strawberries.
You can teach yourself how to change the oil on your car simply by watching YouTube videos. And then all you need to buy are a few basic supplies, and you’ll be able to change your oil for life. Oil changes are either absurdly expensive (dealership) or done half-assed (Jiffy Lube), so doing it yourself gives you a job done right for pennies on the dollar.
And if you find that you have a knack for it, you can teach yourself more basic maintenance jobs like changing brake pads.
Depends, define free and define useful. ;)
You can learn a lot by reading up and watching YT vids. I already did my own car maintenance (started as hobby, now it’s a necessity, car mechanics cost twice/trice my hourly wage), but didn’t know how to replace the fuelpump on this modern car. Garage quoted €500, part was 109, special tool 79, seals 5 each (2). Replaced it myself in 4h.
I’m also learning to play bass guitar with the help of YT (already have the bass), painted my house, replaced kitchen and parts in bathroom including plumbing,… None of DIY things for free, but cheaper then hiring somebody to do these task. Even when you count your hourly wage, most of those tasks can be done cheaper yourself.
When you want no investment at all, languages are very useful to learn, at least when you meet others speaking those languages. Learning to setup a computer with free software is usefull as well (saves cash, so eeven better then free ;) ).
At this moment in time, in most pasrts of Europe and the USA, labour is the most expensive part of everything, so I’d say everything you can learn to do yourself is worth investing some time and maybe some cash in. Nothing wrong with hobbies that can save cash in the long run.
Additional languages beyond your native tongue. Spanish, French, Chinese, American (in my case) Sign Language, etc. There are so many apps that teach even the most basic conversational skills in the most commonly spoken languages, and a lot of content can be found without upgrading to a premium version. It’s a great bonus job skill, and an excellent way to make new acquaintances.
You can literally go to the woods, pick up a thick branch and start carving away. Only tool you need is a cheap knife, even an old kitchen knife would suffice for starters.
In three days of YouTube Tutorials, there’s nearly nothing you can’t learn (up to a certain level of course)
This barely qualifies as a hobby, but at some point I decided to learn how to count in binary on my fingers. It’s handy if you need to hold a number in your head for a bit and can’t write things down, or to count past 10 visually on your fingers for somebody. There are probably YouTube videos on it. I literally can’t remember where I learned, but I practiced a lot when bored in church. It’s relatively non-disruptive and practicing can eat a decent amount of time.
0 materials. Just takes time. Literally free.
I did the same when Masahiro Sakurai explained how to do so when revealing Byleth for Smash Bros. Ultimate. It’s come in handy a few times when needing to count things out, and honestly can be a fun exercise for dexterity to just count to 31 on each hand.
