It has been nearly two weeks since Joe and I cut back on our weeknight TV viewing. I have to say, it has been really good for our lives in general. I had gotten myself to a point where I was coming home, making dinner, and going straight to the couch to watch TV until bed time. Now, I come home, make dinner, and really think about what I want to do with my time. If I have something to do, I get it done right away and then I still unwind right before bed with my 2 episodes of Friends. Rather than thinking about all I didn't get done and should have when my head hits the pillow at night, I feel good about all I got done that day! (But there is literally still so much more to do in hour house...this place is constantly getting dirty, just keeping it clean seems like a full time job!)
Last night, Joe and I started to tackle cleaning out our basement. We actually have a little finished section down there that we never use because we just filled it with all the stuff we didn't know where to put when we moved in. We moved in more than 2 years ago so we decided it was time to go through all the stuff and decide what we could throw out because we'll never use again, what we can donate because we'll never wear again, and what we need to keep because someday we'll want it. Falling into the keep pile was a huge bin of pictures from Joe's childhood that his mom gave him a couple years ago. We ended up spending an hour going through old pictures of baby Joe and found some real gems in there (be on the lookout for TBT/FBF pics). It was a lot of fun and something we probably wouldn't have gotten to form months (if at all) without our newfound mission to get more done and watch tv less.
Tonight we even tried...crossfit! (No it is not possible to do crossfit without talking about it.) TBD if we'll stick with it, but I liked it a lot so I think the odds are pretty good for me (less so for Joe). The change in our life is not so much that we stopped watching TV, it's more that we're consciously choosing what to do with our free time. I had gotten into a bad habit of just watching TV for 3 hours because it involved no thinking or planning. Now I really think to myself, "Ok, I have 3 hours before I want to go to bed. How do I want to spend it? What is really going to make me feel the best when my head hits the pillow?" Maybe it is watching TV and unwinding if I had a long day or don't feel well, but 99% of days aren't so exhausting that I need to come home and zone out in front of the TV to recover. I'm being way more productive and feeling a lot better about pretty much everything, I'm even feeling more energized! If you want to binge on "making a murderer" so you know what's up at the water cooler, I'm not saying it's the worst thing in the world, but I do think that if TV is a big part of your life, you should try just one week with an hour or less of TV a night to see how it goes!
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