Why Younger Generations Are Stealing "Grandma Hobbies"

The internet calls them grandma hobbies, but most of them were never hobbies at all.

Baking bread, canning, sewing, keeping chickens, making butter, drying herbs. These were everyday skills that stopped being passed down in the span of two generations, and now they're making a comeback at a time when people seem burned out by modern life.

I want to talk about why that's happening, and what we can actually learn from it instead of treating it like another passing internet trend.

My farmhouse has a meat locker in the basement. Households used to raise and grow much of what they consumed, and their homes reflected that.

What matters even more is competence. The first time you make butter, you realize how simple it is. The first time you bake bread, you realize it doesn't have to come from a plastic bag. That knowledge builds confidence.

I also caution against turning grandma hobbies into another form of consumerism. You don't need a curated kitchen or matching linens to start. Pick one skill that would actually be useful in your life, and give it a month.

You are capable. This is your little push to go and do it.

You’ll Learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[1:58] What people actually mean by grandma hobbies

[3:41] Grandmas made clothing from wool instead of recycled plastic

[6:32] Tangible results feel different from vanishing screen time

[8:02] The competence shift that comes from making something yourself

[11:04] Gardening can be as simple as you make it

[12:41] Older household items were expected to age, not be replaced

[15:09] How communities were dismantled in two generations

[17:06] The warning against turning grandma hobbies into consumerism

[18:49] Pick one skill and spend a month learning it

Related Gubba Homestead Episodes:

Are Modern Homes Designed to Keep You Dependent?

Does Electroculture Actually Work? Natural Plant Booster

Lately, I’ve been noticing more and more people picking up hobbies that would have been completely normal to our grandmothers. People are baking bread, canning, sewing, crocheting, gardening, making butter, preserving food, keeping chickens, drying herbs, and learning how to make things from scratch again.

The internet has started calling these “grandma hobbies,” which is funny because most of them were never really hobbies to begin with. They were just part of everyday life. What interests me is how popular they’re becoming at a time when people seem completely burned out by modern life.

Hey friends, welcome back to the Gubba Homestead Podcast.

Today I want to talk about why grandma hobbies are suddenly everywhere, why younger people are picking them up, and what I think we can actually learn from this instead of treating it like another passing internet trend.

Before we get into today’s episode, I want to quickly shout out Arvoti, my small-batch skincare company. Arvoti really came from the same desire to simplify what I was bringing into my home and using every day. Everything is made in small batches with ingredients I actually use myself, and if you’ve been wanting to simplify your skincare routine too, you can find everything over at Arvoti.

When people talk about grandma hobbies, they usually mean things like sourdough, quilting, knitting, gardening, canning, sewing, baking, keeping chickens, making jam, collecting old recipes, or learning traditional household skills.

But for most of history, these were useful skills.

Households produced a lot more of what they consumed. Food was grown, preserved, baked, fermented, dried, butchered, or traded locally. Clothing was repaired. Blankets were made. Tools were maintained. People knew how to make things last because replacing something constantly wasn’t normal.

Then convenience changed the way we lived. Supermarkets got bigger, household goods became cheaper, food became more processed, clothing became more disposable, and more of the things people once knew how to do were outsourced.

There were obvious benefits to that. I am not interested in pretending every part of the past was better. Refrigeration is great. Washing machines are great. Modern tools save a tremendous amount of work.

But convenience also meant a lot of knowledge stopped being passed down.
Many people now buy bread without knowing how it is made, buy clothes without knowing how to mend them, and throw away things that previous generations would have repaired. We became very good at consuming finished products and less familiar with the process behind them.

I think that is part of why these older skills feel so satisfying now.

So much of modern life happens on a screen. People work on computers, shop through apps, communicate through messages, watch entertainment through streaming services, and spend hours interacting with things that disappear the second the screen turns off.

Then you spend an afternoon making bread, working in the garden, sewing something, or preserving food, and at the end you have something tangible in front of you. That feels different.
You start with flour and end with bread. You plant seeds and eventually carry food into your kitchen. You take cream and make butter. You take yarn and turn it into something useful.

There is a beginning, a process, and a finished result.

A lot of these hobbies also force you to slow down. A garden grows on its own schedule. Bread rises when it rises. Fermentation takes time. A fruit tree can take years before it gives you a real harvest.

We are so used to instant answers, instant entertainment, fast shipping, and constant convenience that doing something slowly can almost feel unusual.

And sometimes that is exactly what makes it enjoyable.

There is another side to this that I think matters even more, and that is competence.
The first time you learn to make something you always bought, there is a shift in how you think about it.

The first time you make butter, you realize how simple the process actually is. The first time you bake bread, you realize bread does not have to come from a plastic bag. The first time you grow food, you begin to understand everything that goes into producing it.

You stop looking at everyday things as mysterious finished products and start understanding where they come from. That knowledge builds confidence.

I don’t think you need to become completely self-sufficient, and I don’t think that is realistic for most people anyway. Humans have always depended on families, neighbors, trades, and communities.

But knowing how to do more for yourself is valuable. And that is where I think people can get something useful from this trend instead of simply copying whatever hobby is popular online. Look around your own life and ask what skill would actually be useful to you.

If your family eats bread every week, learn how to make bread. If you spend money on herbs all summer, grow herbs. If you constantly throw away clothes because of small tears, learn basic mending. If you garden already, learn how to preserve some of what you grow.

Start with something you already use.

That is a much better place to begin than buying a bunch of supplies for a hobby you saw in a video and forgetting about it two weeks later. Gardening is a perfect example.
Technically, most people do not need to grow tomatoes. You can walk into a grocery store and buy them.

But growing them teaches you things buying them never will.

You learn when your last frost happens. You learn which varieties grow well where you live. You learn about pests, weather, soil, watering, harvest timing, and eventually maybe even seed saving.

One simple skill opens the door to several others.

The same thing happens with preserving food. You start growing tomatoes, and suddenly you want to learn how to can sauce or salsa. You bake bread and become curious about different grains. You keep chickens and start thinking more about compost, garden scraps, feed, and eggs. Traditional skills tend to connect.

That is one reason I think they become addictive in a good way. You learn one thing, and suddenly the world around you makes a little more sense.

I also think this is why people are becoming interested in older household items again.
Cast iron, old wooden furniture, quilts, dishes, baskets, and other older goods were often expected to age. A wooden spoon got worn down. A skillet developed seasoning. Furniture collected scratches. A quilt got patched instead of thrown away. Things were used.

Now we live in a culture where something can feel old the second it stops looking brand new.

Bringing back even a little of that older mindset can change the way you consume.
Before replacing something, see whether it can be repaired. Before buying a specialty tool, ask whether you actually need it. Before throwing something away, think about whether it still has useful life left in it.

That does not mean never buying anything new. It just means becoming a little more intentional about what comes into your home and what leaves it.

There is also a mental side to all of this that I think people are responding to.
Crochet, knitting, sewing, gardening, baking, woodworking, and similar activities demand enough attention to keep you present without constantly bombarding you with information.

A crochet hook is not sending you notifications. Your garden is not trying to sell you anything. A loaf of bread does not care what is trending online. You get to focus on one thing.

For people who have grown up with smartphones, social media, streaming, and constant internet access, that can feel almost unfamiliar. Something old can actually feel new.

There is definitely nostalgia involved too. People see handwritten recipe cards, old kitchens, gardens, pantries, quilts, aprons, baskets, and clotheslines and associate those things with a slower kind of life.

Of course, real life in the past was not some peaceful cottage fantasy. Household work could be exhausting. People worked incredibly hard, and many modern inventions solved very real problems.

But useful knowledge does not become worthless just because newer technology exists. We can keep the washing machine and still learn how to mend a shirt. We can use a refrigerator and still know how to preserve food. We can have a smartphone and still spend an afternoon working with our hands. It does not have to be all or nothing.

One of the stranger parts of this whole revival is that the internet itself is helping bring these skills back.

Someone who never learned to bake bread from a parent or grandparent can now watch someone demonstrate it. You can learn how to garden, sew, ferment, preserve food, make butter, crochet, or repair something from people all over the world.

That is genuinely useful.

But I also think we should remember to ask the people around us.
If someone in your family has been gardening for forty years, ask them what they know. If your grandmother has a recipe everyone loves, write it down. If an older relative knows how to repair something, ask them to show you.

There is an enormous amount of knowledge that disappears simply because nobody thought to ask. And if you learn something useful, teach it to somebody else. That is how these skills survived in the first place.

The one thing I would caution against is turning grandma hobbies into another form of consumerism.

You do not need a perfectly curated kitchen to bake bread. You do not need expensive gardening tools to grow tomatoes. You do not need a matching collection of baskets, linen aprons, antique bowls, and specialty equipment before you can start learning.

Use what you have.

That might actually be one of the most valuable lessons from previous generations.

Make do when you can. Repair things. Learn slowly. Buy tools because you need them, not because you are trying to create the appearance of knowing a skill you have not learned yet.

And you do not need a homestead to participate in any of this.

You can live in an apartment and bake bread. You can grow herbs in a window. You can learn to mend clothing. You can cook more from basic ingredients. You can make broth or learn to crochet.

A lot of practical skills take very little space. So if you want to take something away from this episode, pick one. Think of one useful skill you wish you knew and spend the next month learning it.

Maybe it is baking bread. Maybe it is gardening. Maybe it is sewing, preserving food, fermenting, making butter, saving seeds, or learning how to cook something you currently buy ready-made.

Do not try to learn ten things at once. Learn one thing well enough that it stops feeling intimidating. Then move on to the next.

By the end of a year, you could have a completely different set of skills without ever making your life feel overwhelming.

And I think that is really the value underneath this whole grandma hobby trend. It is not about recreating the past or rejecting everything modern. It is about remembering that you are capable of learning useful things. You can preserve knowledge instead of letting it disappear.

A lot of the things we now call grandma hobbies are simply everyday skills that stopped being passed down for a while. Now people are picking them back up. And maybe that is one trend actually worth keeping.

Thanks for hanging out with me today on the Gubba Homestead Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, send it to someone who has suddenly found themselves baking bread, starting a garden, collecting old cookbooks, or picking up a hobby their grandmother would have recognized immediately.

And before you go, think of your one skill. Start there.