I’m on vacation this week, so I thought I’d republish one of our older and more popular posts. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Personally, our family has a television. We don’t think it’s evil. Together, we enjoy watching movies, quality TV shows, and occasionally the news.

But it’s not on by default, and it’s definitely not our main method of entertainment. For the past three years living overseas, we haven’t received a TV signal, so our television set was reserved solely for watching DVDs.

Now that we’re back in the U.S., we get a minimal amount of channels (just your basic networks and public broadcasting), and it’s on about an hour per day, on average.

This isn’t meant to sound holier-than-thou, as though anything less than that makes someone a bad parent. I’m simply saying that we’ve discovered that it’s honestly not that hard to not depend on television as though it’s the shrine of the living room.

In the household where I grew up, TV was on by default, and I admittedly watched quite a bit (though I still somehow managed to read a ton and come out rather non-addicted to TV). Soon after I moved out of my parents’, I noticed how much I loved the sound of… nothing. That the blare of television didn’t have to constantly be on. I knew I wanted that as the default in my own home.

My husband and I are content with the balance we’ve found in our family; that we use the TV as a tool in our home for both entertainment and education, but it’s not an idol or an addiction.

Yet we know it can easily fall prey to the role of major time-sucker and energy waster. It’s important to remind ourselves continually why it’s a great idea to not always watch TV. And that there are plenty of other things to do.

Here are my favorite reasons.
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Written by Jeannett Gibson of Life Rearranged.

We’re working through Tsh’s ebook One Bite at a Time together, because accountability makes it funner (more fun?).  Join in any time!  You don’t have to do the tasks in any specific order, so even though we are on Project 23, you can easily jump in now.  We’re taking it slow, and I’m always honest about what works for me and my family.  Buy the ebook here for only $5!

Television has long been a point of contention in our home.

My husband loves television (particularly sports), while I would happily toss the whole dang thing if I had the opportunity.  For years, whenever a special occassion came up, be it our anniversary, Valentine’s Day, my birthday, President’s Day—my husband would ask if I had a specific gift in mind.  Every year, every holiday it was the same response: “Throw away the TV.”

While that never actually happened, every few months he would commit to “watching less.”  The problem was that this would work well for about, oh, say a week, and then the tube would be flipped on first thing and stay on…even when he wasn’t in the room.

After a few hours on my couch and throw pillows watching reruns of Hoarders, I would turn it off only to hear exclamations from the garage: “Hey!  I was watching that!”

As you can imagine, this drove me batty.  Absolutely batty.

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