We are officially a television-free household! We had been thinking of making the change for a while and when we had the house painted and needed to take the television off the wall it felt like a perfect time to cut ties. We had the holes from the mount and cords patched, rearranged the furniture and honestly haven't haven't missed it (much).

We were already using our television minimally so this wasn't a big sacrifice for us. A few years ago we ditched cable and have lived happily without it since then. Neither of us care to keep up with the most current shows and over the years Chris has become less interested in watching sports (I never cared to watch sports beyond an occasional football or basketball game). Chris says that he checks football and basketball scores online but doesn't miss watching games.

Dashiell is allowed to watch zero television and we love the idea of raising our boys without a television in the house. Occasionally we let Dashiell look at photos of himself and us on our phones or watch a video that we took of him but that's the extent of his screen time right now. Of course there will still be plenty of screens in our boys' lives as they grow up, and I'm sure we will spend many hours trying to figure out how and when to allow screen time. In fact, I wrote about this very topic before I was even pregnant and we've essentially followed through in just the ways we hoped.

When we had a television we would sometimes fall into a pattern of watching a few episodes of something (usually Parks and Rec) after the boys would go to bed. And it was so easy to watch "just one more" and soon we would stay up later than we intended. Plus it was always the path of least resistance to plop onto the couch rather than play a game with Chris or pick up a book. Those are the kinds of relaxing activities that rejuvenate me, the television would usually leave me feeling exhausted or a bit antsy. 

We do envision starting a tradition of family movie nights in a few years, complete with popcorn and pillows on the floor. So our plan is to figure out a set-up using a projector screen that we can set up in our living room or....in our backyard! 

But for now we're happy to be television-free.

I'd love to know if you'd consider going TV-free, if you already have or if you'd never consider it!