Rainy day activities: Things to Do While It’s Raining That Are Actually Worth Your Time

Published on June 18, 2026 • Posted by Danielle Danielle SHE Magazine Author I write about motherhood the way it really is. Not perfect, not always easy, but real. I share what I’ve learned through... Editorial Process • Leave a comment

I was sitting on my kitchen floor last November with the rain hitting the window so hard it sounded like someone was throwing gravel at the glass. It reminds me of the day when I enjoyed making some driftwood with my kids. This time I thought about Rainy day activities in general, even though I didn’t hear a lot about these activities since lots of people only prefer a hot drink and watch TV when it rains outside.

For me, Rainy day activities get a bad reputation even though I don’t know why, lol.

So here is what I actually do when it rains, and why every single one of these things has left me feeling more like myself than almost anything.

I Give My Home Office the Reset It Has Needed Since January

There is something about grey light through a window that makes you see a room differently.

I started treating rainy days as the time I do my home office makeover, even if it is just a small one, and it has changed how I feel about sitting down to work/ on Monday mornings.

A weekend office transformation does not have to mean buying anything new.

It means pulling everything off the desk, wiping it down, moving the lamp to the other corner, and asking yourself honestly whether what is on that desk is helping you or quietly exhausting you.

I moved my monitor two inches to the left last February and felt like I had a new room.

I Put Together a Gift Basket That Actually Means Something

I made my first real gift basket two rainy winters ago, and I have never gone back to buying something wrapped in plastic from a shop display.

A nostalgic gift basket built for someone you know hits differently than anything you could order online.

I filled one for my mum with the biscuits she ate as a kid, a little journal with a cover she would like, a hand cream she had mentioned once in passing, and a card I actually wrote in with real words.

I think about 80s gift basket ideas every time I am building one for someone who grew up in that era.

The rain gives you the time to think carefully about who you are making it for, and that care is what makes the difference.

I Prep Food for the Things I Have Been Planning and Never Starting

Rain is the best time to get ahead in the kitchen because you are not trying to be somewhere else.

I started using wet weekends to do my camping food prep for upcoming trips, and it has made every single camping experience better by about a hundred percent.

Make-ahead camping meals like marinated grains, pre-chopped vegetables sealed in containers, and ready-to-boil spice blends mean that when you are actually in the woods or by the water, you are eating well without the stress.

I do the chopping, portioning, and labelling while the rain goes on outside, and I feel quietly satisfied after that.

This same logic applies to regular weekly meal prep, freezer cooking, and baking things you have been putting off since the good weather started.

The rain is not stopping you from doing anything.

I Finally Do Something Real in the Garden Without the Pressure of a Perfect Day

Most people think garden work stops when it rains, but I have done some of my best planning on rainy days, sitting at the kitchen table with graph paper and a pencil.

I redesigned my entire flower bed last spring.

I looked up every single garden flower idea I had been saving for months, sketched out what I actually had space for and so on.

By the time the weather cleared, I had a plan instead of just a wish.

If you have been working with clay soil gardening, rainy days are perfect for researching which plants thrive in that kind of ground, rather than fighting it.

I Work on the Corners of My Home That Never Get Attention

There is always a corner.

Every home has one space that gets skipped during every tidy, and every reorganization.

Rainy days are when I go to that corner and deal with it properly.

My cozy balcony folder had been sitting untouched for eight months until that rainy day gave me three hours to actually buy the two small plants, and hang the string of lights I had ordered and forgotten about.

Doing a small balcony on a budget refresh cost me less than forty dollars, and the next dry evening I sat out there with tea and felt great knowing that I did the right thing.

I Read Something That Has Nothing to Do With Being Productive

I want to be clear about this one.

Some of my best rainy day activities have been reading a whole novel in one sitting, watching a film I had been saving, or falling down a rabbit hole about something that interests me with zero practical application.

I once spent four hours reading about angel number 111 and the meaning of seeing 111 because I had been noticing it for weeks.

I also read about zodiac sign love and how zodiac affects love between different signs, not because I was making decisions based on it, but because it was interesting, that’s it.

I Sort Out the Kitchen the Way I Have Always Meant To

The kitchen for me is like a temple, as I spend more of mùy enjoyed time in it.

I did a full kitchen essentials audit and pulled out everything in every cabinet, and asked myself honestly what I actually used and what I was keeping out of vague obligation.

Setting up a budget kitchen setup that actually works is less about buying new things and more about removing the things that are making the space cluttered and resistant.

Rainy days used to make me feel like I was behind.

Now they feel like the days I finally catch up with myself.