Why I’m Finding Hobbies Again As A Mom Who Works From Home

“What are your hobbies?”

I used to get asked this and completely blank. After some hemming and hawing, I'd eventually land on: “…Netflix?” Oof.

There is nothing wrong with a little loafing on the couch while streaming your favorite shows. I still do plenty of it. But I knew as soon as I said it that it wasn't really the answer I wanted to give. It made me uncomfortable to realize that I'd stopped doing things in my life simply because I enjoyed doing them.

Between running a business and co-managing a household, hobbies felt like a guilty luxury that didn't make sense anymore. But honestly? That couldn't have been farther from the truth.

Why hobbies started to matter more after becoming a mom

A lot of my time now naturally revolves around another person. Then there is work. I am self-employed, which means there is almost always something I could be doing.

When you work from home and care for a child, those two parts of life can expand very easily. There is no commute marking the end of the workday, and often no clean handover between professional life and home life. Sometimes all of it is happening in the same room.

It is very easy for “me” to disappear somewhere between caring and working.

I love being a mom, and I like my work. Both are important parts of my life. But they are also demanding parts of my life, and that was what made me start looking at hobbies after becoming a mom.

Hobbies are NOT just gratuitous leisure

While tempting to brush off as a frivolous waste of time, I had a nagging feeling that hobbies offered a lot of benefits. That feeling was confirmed after watching a YouTube video by Sandeep Swadia, "High-Value Hobbies Everyone Should Master, Start Today." Swadia points out that hobbies are more than leisure. He argues that they help us stay curious, creative, and connected to ourselves outside of work.

He even says that because hobbies can infuse our day with discovery and curiosity, that novelty can spark new ways of thinking that spill back into our professional lives. While that's not why we should do them, they do have their benefits beyond simply being enjoyable:

• Reduces stress and helps you switch off

• Strengthens your sense of identity outside work and parenting

• Boosts creativity and fresh thinking

• Gives you a sense of progress, play, and enjoyment

• Can improve your work indirectly through better energy, focus, and perspective

Personally, hobbies give me somewhere to put my attention that is not childcare and not work.

No one needs me to do it. It does not need to earn money or solve a problem, and it does not even need to be something I am particularly good at. There is something very appealing about having an activity that exists for no reason beyond the fact that I wanted to do it.

For work-from-home moms especially, I think that kind of space can be easy to overlook. We talk a lot about better schedules, childcare arrangements, productivity, routines, boundaries, exercise, sleep... All of those things matter, but there is also value in having something in your week that does not belong to your work or your family.

The compulsion to make every hobby productive

When you work for yourself, it is surprisingly difficult to have an interest without wondering whether it could become useful. Photography? Useful for the website. Baking? Maybe I should document it. Writing? Well, that one already became work.

Apparently, I am having to relearn how to like something without immediately giving it a job.

Swadia makes a useful distinction here: a hobby is something you do for yourself, with play taking precedence over performance. Once it becomes about metrics, an audience, status, or external validation, he argues that it starts to lose some of what makes it a hobby in the first place.

When your income comes from your ideas, skills, or creativity, almost anything can start to look like potential material. And on top of that, many of us were raised in a time when we were constantly encouraged to turn our hobbies into our livelihoods.

That makes genuinely unproductive hobbies feel oddly valuable. We need at least a few things in our lives to do with no external ambition whatsoever.

Making time for hobbies as a busy mom

Of course, there is an obvious problem with all of this: time.

“Find a hobby” can sound slightly ridiculous when you are already trying to fit work around naps, childcare, meals, laundry, appointments, errands, and the hundred small things involved in keeping a family moving.

I do not have great stretches of unused time waiting to be filled, so I have stopped imagining hobbies as something that require an entire afternoon, a weekly class, or some big commitment. They can be much smaller than that.

At the moment, some of mine have included flower pressing, bouquet making, baking, getting really, really good at sauces, yoga, journaling, going to the gym, and volunteering with a local moms’ group.

I love swimming too, although it is not very accessible for me at the moment. That has also been a useful realization: some hobbies might belong to particular seasons of life. Something can still matter to you even if it is not especially practical right now.

I am not trying to find the perfect hobby anymore

At first, I think I approached this like another little project: find hobbies, choose hobbies, become someone who regularly does hobbies.

Very tidy. Go me.

But that has not really been how it has worked.

Some things have stuck, and some have not. Some sound appealing until I try them (like plaster canvas art. UGH, not for me), while others surprise me. I am curious about getting into photography and making proper family albums, and I would also like to try tai chi.

I am becoming much less concerned with finding my “perfect” set of hobbies. I care more about keeping some room in my life for curiosity.

That feels more realistic, especially in a stage of life where time, energy, childcare, and routines can change quickly.

Here's a list of things I'm currently entertaining:

• Flower pressing

• Bouquet making

• Baking

• Getting REALLY good at making sauces

• Hitting the gym

• Yoga

• Journaling

• Swimming (though not very accessible for me at the moment)

• Volunteering with a local mom group

And considering getting into:

• photography/album making

• Tai chi

Several of these can fit into the in-between spaces of time that I was filling with scrolling or streaming, which makes them easier for me to actually do.

So, what are your hobbies?

I still think it is a funny little question. A few months ago, it made me uncomfortable because I did not really know how to answer it. Now I find myself asking other people because I genuinely want to know.

What do you do when no one needs anything from it? What have you started simply because it looked fun? What have you kept doing even though you are not especially good at it?

I am still collecting ideas, so hit me up with yours in a comment. 💚