The other day I came to the realization that my Jack Spade Waxwear pocket brief (here’s a link to the Jack Spade website for the official pictures) need some serious cleaning. I received this bag for Father’s day almost two … Continue reading
As mentioned in previous posts (here and here), we removed all pay tv service from our house, with the exception of Amazon Prime video streaming (which we get for free with our Amazon Prime membership which I need for work anyway). The short and sweet version is that the girls don’t even miss it.
In the mornings when they typically would watch Sprout, PBS, or one of the five different Disney channels they now watch videos on PBSKids.org and stream them through the Apple TV. Now, this would be (and really is) fine, but I find the content on that website to be lacking. They only have short (10-12 min) segments for many of the programs, including the girls’ favorite Peg+Cat. That is ok because that show does come in smaller segments on the ol’ broadcast. Some shows, however, have only 2-3 minute vignettes that I’ve seen over and over. The one about Clifford teaching his friends to spin on the ice is particularly burned into my brain—we get it purple-colored poodle dog, you don’t want to look silly in front of your friends, but they’re not your friends because of your ice-spinning abilities.
When they watch any other tv they now usually turn to the DVD collection. In a move that warms the cockles of my heart, they have re-discovered their love of DuckTales
For the missus and I, we haven’t missed TV that much either. I’ve started to watch some old TV on the Amazon Prime streaming, and I might finally finish watching Twin Peaks
At this juncture, it’s looking like a great move.
Yesterday I spent nap time writing a post about co-sleeping. I wasn’t able to finish it, but this morning these two articles popped up on my news feed:
What It Is Like to (not) Sleep at Night
They sum it up better than I could. So instead, here is a run down of last night.
9pm Bliss! All children are sleeping, including the baby in her crib; I’m just going to check email real fast
9:40pm Still on the computer; I force myself to shut it and lay down
9:50pm Baby is awake; thinks she has just had a great nap
10pm Bring out the heavy artillery (nursing her while sitting on the bathroom floor, exhaust fan running)
10:15pm Lay her down in the most gentle way possible; eyes open immediately
10:20pm More heavy artillery, more laying down, more open eyes
10:45pm Finally sleep, and by sleep I mean me laying in the hallway outside the bathroom, nursing a sleeping baby, shivering and without a pillow, exhaust fan still running
11:15pm Baby girl rolls over, I grab a pillow and blanket from the couch, but go back to the hallway and finally fall sleep
2:25am After stirring a few times to eat, baby is sitting up, ready to start her day
2:30am Nuclear option, bathroom floor, shower running, nursing wiggly baby
3:00am Head bobbing in bathroom, move back to hallway
3:45am Awake again, I get up to pee (worst thing I could do), baby acts like she has been left to be raised by wolves
3:50am Very restless baby, sit up, lay down, laugh, cry, fall forward with sleepiness
3:55am Flannery comes out of her room, “My belly tried to throwed up, can I sleep on the floor with you?”
4:15am Sisters playing
4:30am Still playing
4:45am Call for backup; Ryan takes Flannery back to bed, I bring Lowry into our room
5:00am Sleep
5:25am Alarm goes off; I’m supposed to start back at the gym today; not happening
8:47am Phone rings, 80+ year old neighbor asks if I want to come over to watch his grandson ice skate “live on the internet,” I do not
9:00am I get out of bed, AC repair men are due to arrive any minute
9:02am No coffee in the house, find crappy instant, chug crappy instant
9:30am Repair men arrive, baby instantly wakes up
10:00am Bliss! Watching my happy baby chew on pizza crust
Pizza crust for breakfast
I love purging our home of underused items; the feeling of control and the opportunity to organize are right up my alley. Ryan, on the other hand, doesn’t share my enthusiasm. We have Rubbermade containers in our garage full of old Boy Scout projects and Garfield comic books; if it were up to him, he would own 75 t-shirts. A few months ago I did a major clean out of our kitchen; I donated two large boxes of things, and found a few items I deemed valuable enough to try to sell (I use a Beg/Barter/Buy page on Facebook, more about that another day). Since then I had been itching for both of us to clean out our closets.
Before I describe the actual closet purge, let me back up a bit; Ryan had been encouraging me to read a chapter in his new favorite book The 4-Hour Workweek
My half of the closet; look at all those empty hangers.
Ryan’s half of the closet
I really hope I can keep this momentum going. My motivation is two fold: I really do love the feeling of sending unused items out the door, but also, we are moving over the summer, almost certainly to a home that is significantly smaller than the one we currently live in. Right now we have 3 bedrooms, and about 2600 square feet; the house we are most interested in is 4 bedrooms and about 1800 square feet. The next challenge is toys; I can’t wait to say goodbye to all the plastic, noise-making, light-flashing crap we have accumulated over the last five years.
One more picture before I go:
“Reverse the damage of years of consuming as much as you can afford.” Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek
The biggest news of the day is that Beatrix figured out how to navigate the PBS Kids website so that she could change the show she was watching. I guess I underestimated her.
She also asked me several questions about our new arrangement. “Do we only have one Disney now and not DisneyXD?” Sorry, we don’t. “Are we getting it back someday?” I don’t think so but I’m not sure. Mommy and Daddy decided that we would try to cut back on the TV we can watch. “We can still watch Garfield and Friends on the iPad, right?” Yes. (At this point Flannery jumped in with, “And the one with the mountain cat.” referring to the episode of Garfield where whilst camping an escaped puma attacks Jon, Odie, and Garfield shows uncharacteristic courage.)
Day one and no complaints yet.
Not to our house anymore
Well, tonight at midnight Directv will be shut off. It’s not because of bad service (we have no complaints there), or because of a lack of entertainment options (in fact we had too many). It all started about 6 months ago when Katie was reading The Hurried Child. The book discusses the implications of exposing young children to too much media, ideas that really hit home for her. I on the other hand took some convincing.
My first reaction was to suggest waiting for the football season to end, which it did for my teams before the start of the new year. I must also say that this was not the first time I had heard that getting rid of pay tv might be a good idea. One particular place I can think of is Mr. Money Moustache, a blog that I accidentally stumbled upon that preaches a spartan lifestyle so that one doesn’t have to work like a dog for things that aren’t fulfilling.
Despite all that I wasn’t convinced. I think the tipping point was when I realized that after taxes, my 3.5% raise barely covered the monthly subscription. Ouch, I used to think such a raise would be something to celebrate; that news just made me sad. Another important realization is that we didn’t watch TV as much as I thought. In October we donated the TV in our bedroom to a charity sale, and in process found out that we didn’t miss it. Let’s take a moment to remember that TV.
Yes, no more of this
Yes, I bought that Sony Trinitron with the tip money from my first year working for the Detroit Tigers.
Now let’s get this straight, I am not the second coming of Ned Ludd: we do have many other entertainment options in our house. Through the Apple TV
When we told the girls about the change, they didn’t seem to have a problem with it. This is probably due to (at least) two circumstances:
I think if we had waited two years this could be much more difficult.
You may be asking, what’s the benefit to the girls if they still watch 80% of the TV they used to. Good question. Look at the way I phrased it. Of the programs they currently watch, 80% will be available. That doesn’t mean that it will be as easy from them (or for me) to access the content. For now they will still need a parent to drive the iPad/Apple TV combo. It is also much less likely that we can just leave the TV on and have them graze on TV during a weekend morning. This almost never happens 🙂
We will be updating the progress of this experiment in the coming days.
