Having fun for free - or just about free...

BAGGY

What about an adult games night. Get kids games out and get silly. We also do challege nights for our Cub's parents. They are given a 'cheque book' and a list of tasks. Each task costs a cheque and completion of the task earns cheques back. For example the largest newspaper aeroplane, sing ten songs about a coulour, pick a cotton reel up from the floor without using hands. You get the idea. Invite requires RSVP with a bottle or a cake and the winning team/member gets one of the better RSVP's.

thriftwizard

Most of the ideas that have come up for adults so far involve company, don't they? Possibly less sociable ways to pass free time count as quiet contentment, rather than fun. Ones which are obvious to me are reading (libraries are still free - so far!) & making stuff - I make stuff, including quilts, from the kind of fabric (and other resources) that no-one else wants very much, like paint-spattered sheets, holey tablecloths & 99p CS shirts that haven't sold, and shawls from random odds & ends of yarn. Some of it has sold and/or won me prizes; I mention this to show you don't have to spend lots on new fabric, or even an up-to-the-minute sewing machine as most of mine's done on a Jones treadle made in 1909, which cost me all of £2.50!

Someone's already mentioned foraging; experimenting with your finds is almost as much fun as finding them in the first place. You can cook with them, make drinks (not just wine - I'm thinking about cordials etc. too) and even try dyeing - we now have rainbow-coloured old hankies everywhere.

Fishing always looks wonderfully peaceful - though maybe not for the fish - and various kinds of mucking around on water definitely count as fun. Whilst a Sunseeker will definitely set you back a bob or two, our local Freecycle often has surf & body boards, windsurf boards, canoes, kayaks & dinghies offered - we're not far from the sea here, but also have a biggish river within 100 yards. My older boys had an inordinate amount of fun paddling up & down it in an old aircraft tyre a few years back; they all swim like fish & are well-drilled in water safety, though.

Round here there are umpteen opportunities to volunteer, too - National Trust places, heathland conservation, & beach litter patrols, to name a few. No-one able-bodied needs to be alone for long, if they don't want to be, even without transport; lifts are usually offered out to remote locations. There are small local projects like our little museum & theatre which couldn't run without their volunteers, and many of them also rely on less-able-bodied people to run their websites, manage publicity etc. too. Indeed we'd have lost our little gem of an Art Deco theatre some years back if it hand't been for a group of passionate & hardworking volunteers; now it's usually a cinema during the week (much cheaper than anywhere else, even if we have to wait a week or two for the latest releases. And it's walkable too!) and a theatre at weekends, which has touring companies, all the latest comics & good bands. Local am-dram groups & schools also get the chance to use a proper (if small) theatre and we have lots of entertainment at a reasonable price, on our doorstep. So volunteers can & do make a big difference, for all the sneering you hear from some quarters.

FrugalFranny

One good one for littleluns is making veins/trees out of a blob of slightly colored water (cheap kiddie paints will do) and then blowing it around some paper using a straw, you can fold the paper in half for a doubling effect.
You can use water with a spot of slightly thicker white/pink/orange or yellow paint mixed in on a black bit of paper to make 'fireworks' on a night sky. The blowing with the straw to make pictures amused my son for quite a while when he was a tot, if they looked bored, just change the color, see what odd mixes you can make or blow more than one drop/color around at a time.

[Deleted User]

My youngest DGS Mikey loves to make 'biscuit boys ' basically a biscuit dough cut out with a gingerbread man cutter and we cook on a tray and when done we dip the feet in melted chocolate for boots and dab bits of icing of different colours for the buttons up the tummy and then decorate the faces with a squeezy tube of icing Asda do them very cheaply.In fact he reminded me tonight that we wll have to make 'skeletons' and 'spider' biscuits for Halloween next month.Use bits of liquorice or strawberry laces for spiders legs (stick them on with a little dab of icing) and white icing for decorating the little bicuit boys with 'bones'

valk_scot

Free or nearly free hobbies for adults? If you've got a garden you can grow things. Veg and flower seeds are cheap in the ££ shops and Lidl, home made compost is free (three pallets make a perfectly good compost bin or some councils provide them free or very cheaply), things like pots can be made from recycled yoghurt pots, tins and milk bottles, labels from milk bottles and you don't need many basic tools to start, I took on my first allotment with a Value garden fork from Tesco plus a Value hand fork and trowel.

Ditto hobbies...you can knit with charity shop needles, reclaimed yarn from CS sweaters, lots of free patterns on line. Same with crochet. You can sew with just a hand needle, small items don't take long and small intricate items like toys and purses are often better sewn by hand anyway. Older sewing machines are very cheap as Thriftwizard says, often an older relative will be happy to pass on her old hand crank or you can pick one up cheaply, most of the time they just need a new needle and oil to be running like new. CSs are a great source of clothes to remodel and fabric to use, buttons and notions or you can recycle zips and buttons from your older worn out clothes.

Kids like all the above too btw...

louise3965

We still make life size paper people even though my eldest is 20! You use the back of an old roll of wallpaper and everyone lays down and someone else draws round them to form a life size person. You just colour and decorate these people in with paint, other wallpaper, fabric or old mazagines. Then stick them all along garden fences or something. We do different poses for bands, fashion models, TOWIE and decorate accordingly. Its great fun