Unplugged

On Friday night, we unplugged the satellite dish from our television sets. It was more or less an impulsive decision, based largely on the fact that our kids are gravitating more and more to the TV than to anything else on the farm and also that I can stand right next to them and call their name and they don’t even hear me. Our television must have some strange magnetic pull or something. Lately they have chosen television over outside play more often than I’d like to admit.

I will be the first one to say that I thought it would be torturous. I use the DVR on our satellite to record lots of shows, and I watch them back after the kids go to bed. I am a night owl, so I am often up until midnight “catching-up” on things I missed. I really thought it was going to be difficult, and it was. For about 24 hours. That’s when I came to the rather painful realization that TV has been my escape hatch for far too long.

Okay, let’s be honest, here. I look forward to the kids’ bedtime so that I can have a couple of hours to myself. From 6am when I’m getting the kids up and fed and dressed and off to school, to work where I interact all day with middle-schoolers, (yes, you’re jealous, I know) back to home where I cook and clean and bathe and check homework and strain lard and start kitchen fires, to bedtime at 8:15pm, I am at the beck and call of a whole lot of other people. My husband wonders why I like to stay up late…I tell him it’s the only time all day where I belong to me.

Until last Friday, I devoted way too much “me time” to the television. I won’t even try to defend that decision with excuses about staying culturally relevant and mindless entertainment. Until I Unplugged I didn’t really see a problem. Once the television was no longer available to me, I experienced a strange, mindless phenomenon. More than once I wandered into the living room before I remembered there was nothing to do there. Except vacuum it. (Which I finally did, BTW.)

I actually wandered aimlessly for hours around the house. The only thing I could find to do in the kitchen was clean off a countertop. In the dining room I decided to disassemble a fort made of afghans and pillows. The bathroom was a disaster, as usual. Spent almost 20 minutes in there. Hmmm….it’s only 9:15. Let’s see…I can fold some laundry. And pick up the toys on the steps. (Are you sensing a pattern, here?)

I finally went to bed at 9:45. Of course I couldn’t sleep, so I wrote a quick note to a friend in a card, then picked up a book I’ve been meaning to get to. I read until about 10:15 and then I actually shut off the light and went to sleep. At 10:15!

The result? I woke up without an alarm at 5:15. I was ready for work more than 40 minutes before I usually am. And I actually felt pretty rested. And my house was clean! (Well, clean-er, but you know what I mean.)

Sounds awesome, right? It actually is. I got a little panicky when I realized I was going to miss the finale of The Amazing Race. And The Voice. And the next episode of Chopped: All-Stars. But honestly, once I resigned myself to finding something else to do, I stopped missing it.

We left the DVD hooked up; I rented RedBox movies for the kids on Sunday and we had a popcorn night. That was super-fun, and after they went to bed I was able to organize three drawers in the buffet and bake a loaf of banana bread. I am making no promises about how long I can sustain this. But I will say it has improved the quality of my life for the time being.

The kids, you ask? The kids didn’t even blink an eyelash. I said the TV was done, and they put on their shoes and went outside. We have two new baby piglets to take care of…the trampoline is swept off…the bike tires are pumped up…the tire swing is ready to go. They haven’t missed it at all.