Life Without Screens? Our Conclusion

I love my husband! He is such a blessing to me! I started the No-Screens week without implying that my husband needed to follow it with me. But he decided to go along with it and except for his study time for his sermons, he also went through No-Screen week. So on Sunday night, when the week was drawing to a close, I sought him out and asked him for his input and leadership in what to do with what we experienced. Based on the Pros and Cons from our week, we knew that a change was needed. 

Here is what we decided to do in order to maintain the affect that No-Screens week had on our home. 

The Computer

1. Limit time to a certain amount per week. This week I am logging my time for different things - blog time, play time, social time, research time, shopping time. Time consuming in and of itself but after this week, I'm hoping to be able to come up with a practical amount for total amount of time I need per week. 
2. Reduce the Facebook statuses to those that I actually WANT to read their status updates - I'm keeping my friends, just unsubscribing from some statuses.
3. Reduce the amount of blogs that I read. I read in Google reader and I used to read. every. single. one. It was like a checklist to check off by reading them all. Now I am unsubscribing from several for the sake of saying no to say yes to my family. 
4. Not requiring myself to read every single post of the ones that I do read - if the title doesn't grab me, I'm not reading it. I'll be reading my blog subscriptions in list form instead of full content form. 
5. Keep an ongoing internet To-Do list. I had to do this during my time in No-Screens week because let's face it, there are things that I HAVE to do online and can't do anywhere else. It's much easier and time and money saving to purchase a book on Amazon than trying to find it used somewhere else! By keeping a list, my time online will be well used instead of just puttering! 
6. No video games. For right now our kids are very young and they don't need them. We will probably revisit this in the future when they really want to play the games, right now, they won't miss them. As for me, unless I buy a new Nancy Drew game, I'm off them too. 

The Television

1. We're moving it out of our living room down to the basement. And no, the basement is for storage purposes only, it's not our family room. By doing this, it is no longer accessible. 
2. We're instituting Family Movie night! Every other week, we will bring the TV upstairs and have pizza and pick a movie we can all enjoy together. We might rent one from Amazon or Redbox or watch one of the many we actually own. 
3. We're canceling Netflix. We watched everything that was worth anything on there anyway. Sad I know. 
4. We're instituting Mom and Dad Movie night. Since we have littles, the movies that we are able to watch with our kids are pretty limited. (We have a nightmare problem and anything close to violence ends up in a rough night for mom and child). On the weeks we are not having a family movie night, we're going to bring the TV upstairs for our very own in-home date night and watch a movie for us. I'm thinking a little better food than pizza though! 
5. Keep our eye open for a TV cabinet so we don't have to keep moving our TV around and can lock it up instead. 

There it is. I have slightly mixed feelings about these decisions but they were made together and I am glad we made them. I LIKE not having limits on my life. I have to confess, if I knew BEFORE No-Screen week that we were going to be making this decision, I would have stayed FAR FAR away! But now, I know that for us, this is the best solution and will enable us to spend our time in far better God-glorifying ways than what we were doing before. So what do you think about it for YOUR family? I highly recommend taking the plunge and going for a week without screens and seeing how it affects your family! Remember: 

By saying YES to one thing, you are saying NO to something else. 

My whole purpose in this adventure was to see what I have been saying "No" to by choosing to watch TV and use my computer. Now I know, and now I am responsible for that knowledge. Keep an open mind about where it will take you, you may not land where we did and that's ok, see how God leads your family and you will be glad you did! I know we are! 

Tomorrow I'll tell you about how I broke my other addiction - caffeine! I'm totally off it and I already feel better! 

In HIS Grip, 

               

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