Turn Off the TV For a Happier & Cleaner Home
The author of the excellent blog Becoming LDS recently wrote about how she decided their family would go without TV for one week. The results were a small miracle that occurred in her house. They put a sign on the TV saying it was “No TV Week” and she recorded all the great things that came from shutting of the TV:
Seriously, push the off button on your TV for a week and watch your house whip into shape. It is quite amazing. My house is the cleanest it has been in a long, long while. …
My kids are friends. They ACTUALLY like each other. Really they do. There were still moments of an 17 month old’s squeals from a brother’s “love” but they played together way, WAY more than I have seen them play, I think EVER. And they laughed.
Read all her thoughts and new insight gained from “No TV Week” at Becoming LDS.
Let us know in the comments if you’ve ever done this, and what your experience was.
Guest Author
dyejo
4 comments
Hmm… we recently turned off cable and now just use hulu and netflix, and I have noticed a difference, but it might be fun to try a whole week with NO TV.
I must admit I'd proabably have the hardest time. I put the baby down for a nap and watch a little while I eat my lunch. It's my sanity.
Perhaps I could still allow that. 🙂
My recent post Traveling with Kids- What to Eat
I've never gone on a complete TV withdrawal like your quoted author, but I noticed one real benefit of leaving the TV off except for something I particularly want to watch: When I have the TV on as background noise, even when I'm doing something like housework that presumably isn't disturbed by my listening, the constant passage of programs keeps me acutely aware of the passage of time. It's 10:00. It's 11:00. Gee, I've been working on this floor for more than half an hour! I hear Judge Alex; that means it's between 1:00 and 1:30 …
The temple isn't the only place where I benefit from taking off my watch and becoming oblivious to time. When I'm not pointlessly aware of time because I'm being constantly reminded by the changing programs, then life is just life. This task takes as long as it takes, without hurry and without stretching it out so that I can hear the last few minutes of some show before I go to the next chore. An afternoon is a pleasant period with its own natural rhythm, not something artificially cut up into half hours.
I like living rather than marking time. Everything gets done even without the tyranny of the clock, or its TV surrogate. There is peace and serenity and freedom in giving everything the time it needs, no more, no less.
We tried this, 2 years ago. I disconnected the antenna from our tv so that it can only be used to watch videos and dvds. The uproar from our 4 children was deafening, but I stuck to it – and we haven't missed it! Not in any real sense. Our home runs more smoothly, there is less demand for consumer rubbish (the ads were actually the catalyst for getting rid of tv), and we feel more in control of our own time.
So, 2 years and counting of no tv – even the toughest tv-addicted members of the family are ok with the decision now. We watch what we really want to see as replays on the internet, and even that doesn't happen very often. But when it does, it is AD FREE!
Someone criticized us as parents for this decision, saying it was irresponsible to not watch the news. This is a non-issue, in fact. We read the news on the internet, and listen to it on the radion while driving. I knew about the death of Bin Laden before most of my tv watching friends, because I happened to be driving in my car at the time of the speech. You don't need a tv to keep up with current affairs.