By Shannin Prather
April 2020 | 2020 Spring Newsletter
Creative hobbies such as drawing, sewing, painting, knitting, baking, wood carving, and playing music are great ways to enjoy your time when conditions make it difficult to be outdoors. Creating something with your own hands, imagination, or even coming up with an idea for someone else to use is a great way to engage your mind and provide focus and enjoyment while staying indoors.
“When we are involved in (creativity), we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life,” Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi said during a TED talk in 2004. These creative activities, known as “crafting,” have been shown to help relieve anxiety, depression and chronic pain. Crafting can help people relax, build confidence, improve motor skills, and even slow memory loss.
Crafting can be simple and inexpensive, and can easily involve using recycled items that have little to no cost. In fact, many household items that you might normally throw away can be repurposed to fit a new and imaginative purpose. For example, an old t-shirt can be refashioned into a reusable shopping bag: cut off the sleeves, sew the bottom hems together, widen the neck hole, and use the sleeve holes as handles. Voilà!
Whether you love painting with watercolors from the dollar store, building something out of wood scraps, scrapbooking treasured photos, or creating a poem or song for a loved one, let your creativity flow! It’s a great way to stay healthy and engaged during stressful times.
To find more inspiration, phone a crafty friend or browse the internet. You can find many wonderful ideas at pinterest.com, hometalk.com, instructables.com, or by typing “DIY” (Do It Yourself) into your internet search bar.