The Great Television Experiment, Or We're Too Poor For Cable

We dropped cable a few years back in an effort to save some money. The kids grumbled a bit but since it was cancelled just before summer came, we knew they'd rather be outdoors than indoors anyway and wouldn't miss it much. For the most part, none of us have. Sam does during football season, but he's even gotten over the loss. We did enroll in that super sweet $8 Netflix deal, and that helps immensely.

There are a few things we've learned about this experiment. First of all, we've realized that we spent far too much time sitting mindlessly in front of the television doing nothing just because that's what is expected of Americans.

We have also become very spoiled by Amazon Prime and Netflix delivering whatever we want to watch exactly when we want to watch it. (Except for those things we want to watch and they don't have. That's frustrating.) But we briefly talked about picking up cable again this year (that conversation lasted an entire week before we said, "Nope, not going back.") and the kids said they're not so sure they'd be content with television programming again and having to wait to watch the next episode of something.  So there's that.

Commercials are something I know nothing about. Actually, television is something I know nothing about. I have no clues what shows are airing anymore, what is new, what dropped off, or what is all the rage. I hear Facebook blather about The Voice, so I know that's still a thing. I miss commercials around Black Friday because I've snagged a few gift ideas for the husband that way, and I'll admit some of the people working in advertising are genius at coming up with some entertaining ways to get you to buy products. I kind of miss commercials, which is odd to hear since most people with 59 channels to watch just skip commercials altogether and don't even appreciate them.

But tonight I realized that I have little patience for watching TV. We sat down as a family and watched a few episodes of a show that was about to go off Netflix. I got through 2.5 episodes before I ran out of things to do on my computer (I probably should have blogged then) and just sat there watching TV without multi-tasking. That lasted 90 seconds. I headed to the sewing room. I got a few things created there and found it to be a much better use of my time.

I am fairly certain this makes me as anti-American as it gets, right? It also makes me rather glad that we broke the television habit. The things I get done now are tenfold in comparison to the days we sat and mindlessly wiled away the evening hours. But my house still isn't clean, so there's that.