Passionate Homemaking

Living simply in order to give generously
Sep 10

Simplifying Entertainment

building the family, simple living Add comments

This week in our sim­pli­fy­ing series I wanted to delve into the topic of enter­tain­ment. I want to make it clear from the start that this is def­i­nitely a lib­erty issue (2 Cor. 3:17). Each of us is respon­si­ble to pray and make wise deci­sions for our own fam­i­lies, and thus Aaron and I have sought to do in our house­hold. We have free­dom in Christ, but let us not use it as an oppor­tu­nity for the flesh or as an excuse for doing evil, but rather to serve one another (Gal 5:13, 1 Pet. 2:16). Our stan­dards may seem strict to some, but maybe we all should re-​evaluate the long term impact that our choices of enter­tain­ment can have in the home.

You very well may observe in the modern Amer­i­can home the pres­ence of a tele­vi­sion in each room of the house for every family member to have ample oppor­tu­nity to watch their own shows with­out the con­flict of other opin­ions. You also may notice a sig­nif­i­cant absence in family gath­er­ings around the dinner table to share at least one meal a day. Rather, every­one would prefer being in their own corner, enter­tain­ing them­selves, or else absent from the home all together. I believe the increase in tech­nol­ogy and enter­tain­ment pieces around our homes has made a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the degra­da­tion of the Bib­li­cal family structure…and where there is no family com­mu­nity and fel­low­ship, we see the falling apart of fam­i­lies nationwide.

1 John 2:15-16 “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boast­ful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.”

What is the purpose of entertainment?

More often than not, enter­tain­ment is an idol in our nation. Just take a look at Hol­ly­wood. Mil­lions of dol­lars a year are poured into making the most enter­tain­ing, dra­matic, awe-​inspiring films. Bib­li­cally speak­ing there is cer­tainly room to relax and take time to rest, as the Word reminds us fre­quently of the impor­tance of rest­ing (Exodus 35:2). Enter­tain­ment should serve the pur­pose of rest­ing in mod­er­a­tion, as this also can become an idol and lead to poverty (Prov. 6:10). It can also be used effec­tively in build­ing the family, strength­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion and rela­tion­ships, as well as whether or not it is devel­op­ing skills and knowledge.

But with every enter­tain­ment pos­si­bil­ity we should prayer­fully eval­u­ate the fol­low­ing questions:

1. Is this enter­tain­ment choice serv­ing a mean­ing­ful pur­pose? Is it a wise invest­ment of our money, time or resources?

2. Is it build­ing our family in some way (devel­op­ing rela­tion­ships, strength­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion)? Or will this item tear our family down?

3. Is it help­ing to build skills or strengthen knowl­edge and learn­ing that can be used for the glory of God?

In an effort to build our family, strength­en­ing family rela­tion­ships, and sim­plify the enter­tain­ment choices in our lives, in addi­tion to choos­ing frugal options for enter­tain­ment, we have come to a few conclusions…

Television

We decided from the begin­ning of our mar­riage that we would rather avoid the pres­ence of a tele­vi­sion in our home. We felt that this was one means of safe­guard­ing our family against temp­ta­tion and sin, guard­ing what we set before our eyes (Psalms 101:3). Although we have appre­ci­ated the use of tele­vi­sions in the past at family and friends, and although not all that is pre­sented on TV is harm­ful, the major­ity takes much time and dis­cern­ment to weed through. As we have expe­ri­enced while on vaca­tion and having the ready use of a tele­vi­sion, it has rein­forced our real­iza­tion that It can often become a time waster for us, as we tend to just veg out and lose track of pre­cious time that could be invested elsewhere.

I strug­gled with the temp­ta­tion of secretly watch­ing soap opera’s and stir­ring up roman­tic feel­ings and thoughts before the proper time in my early teens, and do not want my chil­dren (my daugh­ters espe­cially) to be sub­ject to the temp­ta­tion (or to the worldly view of love pre­sented on such shows). This is just one step we have decided to take in our house­hold for guard­ing the entrances of our home.

Movies

Movies also have some of the same pit­falls as tele­vi­sion, and thus must be chosen with wisdom and dis­cern­ment. As a family we greatly enjoy a movie on a lim­ited basis as it serves to pro­vide a little rest and relax­ation, espe­cially after a busy day. Many of our choices are cen­tered around the movies abil­ity to strengthen our knowl­edge of his­tory, or to inspire us through a story of hope. Many movies can be ben­e­fi­cial as we seek to dis­cuss the mean­ing behind the story/theme and thus builds rela­tion­ship, think­ing skills, and shared experience.

We have set a goal for our­selves this year not to rent any movies. Why? Mainly to cut back on our enter­tain­ment spend­ing. We chose instead to borrow movies from friends and family or to watch a select amount of free movies avail­able on Hulu.com (for those with high-​speed inter­net access). Many libraries offer movies as well for borrow, but our library unfor­tu­nately does not offer this ser­vice. We try to limit our movie watch­ing to once a week.

So rather than spend­ing too much time find­ing out­side enter­tain­ment, pur­pose­ful enter­tain­ment can be found in activ­i­ties that build the family. Here are a few ideas…

Family Nights

Grow­ing up, Friday night was our sacred family night. We declined out­side invi­ta­tions in order to make family a pri­or­ity. I greatly appre­ci­ated this tra­di­tion in my family and want to con­tinue it in my own little house­hold as our family grows. These were pur­pose­ful nights focused on build­ing our family rela­tion­ships, learn­ing to enjoy one another’s com­pany, and just have fun together. As a result of this focus, our family rela­tion­ships are very close to which I am very thankful.

Rather than spend­ing a lot of money on enter­tain­ment, we found more plea­sure in the fol­low­ing activities…

Family Walks

Walk­ing, roller blad­ing, biking…all these activ­i­ties would often be seen included in our family night activ­i­ties in the Taylor house­hold. We had sev­eral favorite trails or paths to enjoy and I have loved seeing these pass on to my own family now since get­ting mar­ried. Aaron and I love walk­ing along the Van­cou­ver water­front (Colum­bia river). It is even where he took me the night he proposed!

Reading Together

We enjoyed a lot of family read­ing together grow­ing up, includ­ing mate­ri­als like C.S. Lewis’ Chron­i­cles of Narnia, etc. Now in my own little family, we find much enjoye­ment in wor­ship together in the evening, com­plet­ing a project together, or simply read­ing A Reason for God by Tim Keller (our cur­rent book), Advent read­ings during the hol­i­days, or other materials.

Other frugal activ­i­ties we have done include having a family picnic, get­ting ice cream at our local TCBY, enjoy­ing the farmer’s market, etc. All in all, our vision is to see our family grow stronger together, to love one another’s com­pany, and to wisely use our time for the glory of God.

If you came to our house, you would find the enter­tain­ment items quite simplified…no TV, DVD player, com­puter games or game consoles…but rather an abun­dance of good books and our lap­tops (which can also become a dis­trac­tion, as I have strug­gled with, if not used purposefully).

What activ­i­ties have you found to be effec­tive in sim­pli­fy­ing your enter­tain­ment choices? Do you have any pur­pose­ful enter­tain­ment ideas to share?

P.S. I am run­ning out of ideas for the con­tin­u­a­tion of my simple living series…if you have any ideas or spe­cial requests for future posts on the topic, please send them my way!


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32 Responses to “Simplifying Entertainment”

  1. lizzykristine @ Uplifted Eyes says:
    September 10, 2008 at 7:32 am

    We also chose to not have a TV from the begin­ning of our mar­riage. Most of our friends do, which is fine by us. We appre­ci­ated going over to their places to watch some of the olympics. :) It has turned out to be a good choice for us, though, as I have health prob­lems that mean spend lots of time in bed. I would not be able to resist the temp­ta­tion to turn on the tube to pass the time, whether it was a decent show or not…

    Hulu.com has been great for us, though. We usu­ally don’t use it more than once a week, but we love to watch old TV shows on it (like Father Knows Best, Dick Van Dyke). They’re less than 30 min­utes so it hardly makes a dent in the evening, and it gives us some­thing to laugh about together and for days after­ward. In the same genre, we pick up the $1 DVDs of Andy Grif­fith when­ever Target has them. We have gotten so much joy, jokes, and mutual laugh­ter out of these old shows!

    Reply
  2. Becky says:
    September 10, 2008 at 7:50 am

    Lind­say, I love your simple posts. I am not a TV watcher, if I do watch TV I tend to watch sports (foot­ball or bas­ket­ball). Besides that I mainly watch movies/DVDs. But I am per­fectly con­tent to have the TV off to read a book, work on com­puter, etc. My DH is the oppo­site - he would rather have the TV on. Hope­fully I can get him to cut back on that a bit.

    In regards to new topics, I have a ques­tion. My DH is leav­ing his cur­rent job on Sept.19th and he has applied to other jobs but hasn’t heard back as of yet. So there is a pos­si­bil­ity of him not work­ing for a bit which means I will be the sole bread­win­ner. Do you have any suggestions/recommendations for a young couple, no kids, to be more frugal with the pos­si­b­lity of living on one income, instead of our normal two?

    Reply
  3. christa says:
    September 10, 2008 at 7:59 am

    This is a great post. Choos­ing enter­tain­ment is very tricky at times. Espe­cially as the kids get older.

    Our family has not had a tv since we were mar­ried almost 12 years ago. It has been one of the best choices we have ever made. It has driven some of our family crazy at times. Caus­ing them to repeat­edly offer us tv’s dvds….

    We have also chosen to limit the out­side activ­i­ties we are involved in. My hubby is very ath­letic and loves to get out with the boys and play sports so the boy each get to play base­ball and he coaches them. They love this time with their dad being the coach of their team. Our girls take ballet one day a weak. I know sports can be some­what con­tro­ver­sial, but this is what works for our family.

    Bless­ings to you
    christa

    Reply
  4. Cammie says:
    September 10, 2008 at 8:08 am

    You can also often find geat videos at your local library. Thanks for the post.

    Reply
  5. Jill A. says:
    September 10, 2008 at 8:33 am

    Family nights are the best! I love your sim­pli­fy­ing series. Another idea for your series:
    *keep­ing cloth­ing simple — how much cloth­ing does one person really need?
    *sim­pli­fy­ing craft sup­plies (I need help!)

    Reply
  7. Farrah says:
    September 10, 2008 at 9:06 am

    Lind­say,
    I LOVE this post. My hus­band and I have noticed since school went into ses­sion that our family has kind of split up. My teenage son goes into our bed­room to go onto the com­puter. Our pre­teen son goes into his bed­room to play his video game. I’m typ­i­cally in the kitchen. My hus­band is watch­ing tv in the living room. After a family outing on Sat­ur­day (which nei­ther boy was happy with), when we came home, we all sep­a­rated. I told my hus­band that it breaks my heart. So, we are now eating dinner together, whether my hus­band can get home in time or not, and will plan on Friday nights as our family time.
    For your next post, can you talk about sim­pli­fy­ing paper work? I am ter­ri­ble with orga­ni­za­tion and we seem to keep every­thing! Just a sug­ges­tion.

    Reply
  8. Chloe says:
    September 10, 2008 at 9:30 am

    I grew up in a home with­out a tv and it cer­tainly was a bless­ing. It gave me a love for read­ing, knit­ting, crocheting,drawing and paint­ing. Now we just rent a movie once in awhile…but some­times when it comes time to watch it I find I would rather do some­thing else. I am not against tv but it does turn out to be a time­waster some­times.

    We also had family nights most Fri­days or Sat­ur­days. I have lots of good mem­o­ries of “swim night” at the YMCA, camp­ing, Scrab­ble games, tennis, free sym­phony con­certs (we all played the violin at one point), sleep­overs at Grandma’s farm, etc. Great post :)

    Reply
  9. Shannon says:
    September 10, 2008 at 9:53 am

    Hi, Lind­say. I have an idea for your “Simplify” series. What about the home office? How to have a simply system for files, bills, incoming/outgoing mail… We have lim­ited our “office” space to a small table in the living area of our small two-​bedroom apt. but we still seem to be over­run with tons of paper! I’d love to hear how some­one else is tack­ling this.

    You had a good word about enter­tain­ment. We find that we must really be vig­i­lant in guard­ing our home against what is allowed to come in through movies, tv, and even books and mag­a­zines. If we are not care­ful, these things will dull our senses, and eat away our time!

    Thanks for shar­ing!
    Shan­non
    Port Neches, TX

    Reply
  10. Laura says:
    September 10, 2008 at 10:50 am

    Spend­ing family time together is so impor­tant. I am cur­rently work­ing on putting together a 40 day T.V. free chal­lenge for fam­i­lies. It will take a while to com­plete though, because my goal is to include one activ­ity and one wor­ship idea for each day. If any of you need ideas for family time though, I would encour­age you to check out the family fun ideas at joshuashouse.com. These activ­i­ties were cre­ated with a lot of prayer, and all strive to point to our Cre­ator.

    Thank you for your honest and straight­for­ward post Lind­say.

    Reply
  11. Willow says:
    September 10, 2008 at 11:31 am

    Great post! I find that TV often keeps you dis­tracted from more impor­tant things you should be doing and gen­er­ally speak­ing, kids are so easily attracted to it I really think for our kids we wouldn’t be doing them any favors by let­ting them sit in front of the TV. An occa­sional movie is fine with me but it’s inter­est­ing that my girls (5 and 3.5) rarely even want to sit through the whole thing…they’d rather be hop­ping around the living room doing gym­nas­tics!

    Not sure what a neat friendly title would be but maybe an idea for your Sim­plify series could have some­thing to do with how, in gen­eral, you can sim­plify the lives of your chil­dren so that friends don’t become their pri­mary focus, but rather their sib­ling rela­tion­ships. Does that make sense? I know you have a lot of sib­lings and I’d be curi­ous to learn how your par­ents struc­tured your time when you were younger and what kind of limits they set on out­side friendships…who goes where and for how long, etc.? I find that my 5 year old is so eager to play with friends and I can see how that can get out of hand rather quickly as for our family my prayer is that my chil­dren are best friends with each other. (not to say of course out­side friend­ships don’t have a place, just not above sib­ling relationships…) Just an idea :)

    Reply
  12. DeAnna says:
    September 10, 2008 at 11:41 am

    This is a good post. We do have a TV, but we know that this has to be lim­ited and we have to be very care­ful. There really isn’t a great deal of shows on worth even watch­ing. And if we do watch TV, we don’t watch reg­u­lar TV with our girls. There is just too much in between on com­mer­cials and things that I don’t feel like they need to see - even when my hus­band is watch­ing sports, we have to avoid the com­mer­cials, ads for new movies, actu­ally ads for any prod­uct in gen­eral have gotten really bad. We enjoy family movie nights where we will either get a movie from the library or watch another “tested” kid movie (obvi­ously some sup­posed kid movies, we’ve found not to be for kids with lan­guage and inu­en­dos), we eat pop­corn and all cuddle on the floor or couch. There are a couple kids shows that I let my girls watch as well, Dora, Diego, Lazy­town (Isabella loves gym­nas­tics). But even if it is a kids show it has to be some­thing that I have sat down and watched with them before and also not some­thing they watch for a long time. I think it can get to the point where some people use it as a babysit­ter. I love that you men­tion at the begin­ning about this being a lib­erty issue and that we each have to be respon­si­ble for our deci­sion. I think its great if people don’t have a tv, but I think if you learn to con­trol the tv that is good too. It works for us, although we have had to pur­pose in this. Alot on both sides of our fam­i­lies would sit around with the tv on all day. This was some­thing we talked about when we got mar­ried and had to really make deci­sions on and pur­pose to do. I think enter­tain­ment as far as television/movies has to be judged accord­ing to God’s stan­dards like any­thing else. We had a family member recently who had men­tioned to us about them not want­ing to have a tv other than just for movies, they didn’t have any reg­u­lar tv coming in, but they watched a ton of movies. Then when we went to their house they rented a rated R rather scary movie and we had brought our 2 year old. Thank­fully, we had eaten dinner together, we weren’t the only ones that came and we were able to excuse our­self due to “baby’s bedtime” and not risk offend­ing them.

    Other activ­i­ties we like are walks, hiking, biking, parks, in our small yard last night we had a little nature hunt - find­ing mush­rooms, eggshells from a bird, feather… Now that our girls are old enough to under­stand, they love play­ing hide and seek, espe­cially flash light hide and seek in the house - one hides with mommy, one hides with Daddy. Trips to the library where they can pick out books. And lots of singing and danc­ing going on over here - my girls espe­cially love Steve Greens “hide em in your heart” CDs.

    Reply
  13. DeAnna says:
    September 10, 2008 at 11:42 am

    Oh man, sorry I’m such a blab­ber mouth, my fin­gers just get going and I can’t stop. :)

    Reply
  14. Amanda says:
    September 10, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    I would, like a pre­vi­ous com­menter, be inter­ested in how you have chosen to sim­plify your wardrobe choices.

    I agree with you on the tele­vi­sion sub­ject, and wish I could get my hus­band on board with the idea. (He likes it for back­ground noise, but it always seems to suck us in to a show.) I would love to get rid of the tele­vi­sion!

    Reply
  15. SarahMichelle says:
    September 10, 2008 at 2:20 pm

    We don’t have a TV in the house either, which shocks most people when they come over for the first time, but we feel that our mar­riage and family have been ben­e­fited by not having the dis­trac­tion.
    Lately though we have been strug­gling a bit with the level of dis­trac­tion and temp­ta­tion pre­sented by the inter­net. I know a couple of people who have gotten rid of their TV’s, not out of con­vic­tion or a desire to watch less pro­gram­ing, but simply because most of their shows are avail­able to be watched online.
    For myself, I am not too inter­ested in watch­ing TV shows online, but I find that if I am not care­ful I can spend a lot of time read­ing blogs and doing other “positive” things online. Of course I am grate­ful for all of the won­der­ful resources that I have access to via the inter­net (espe­cially THIS blog, thank you!) but I guess I am just find­ing for myself that I have to be care­ful not to spend so much time trying to learn how to be a good wife, mother and home­maker that I ignore my hus­band, chil­dren and home. :)

    Reply
  16. Kristi says:
    September 10, 2008 at 6:51 pm

    I have not com­mented on here before but thought I would share a few com­ments on the pos­i­tives of sec­u­lar enter­tain­ment. My hus­band and I have recently found how the media can be used to start con­ver­sa­tions with non-​believers about the gospel. No movie or book is ever writ­ten with­out a spe­cific goal or mes­sage that the director/writer wants others to get. We have found that these themes/messages often show where our world is in their pur­suit of God. They also seem to follow the theme of good vs. evil, the need for redemp­tion, and often the need for a sac­ri­fice to save human­ity. We are very pur­pose­ful in our movie-​watching, to look for these ques­tions that our world may be asking, and then to facil­i­tate con­ver­sa­tion with non-​believers using that movie/book. Thanks for your sin­cer­ity!

    Reply
  17. M.I.A in Minnesota says:
    September 10, 2008 at 7:24 pm

    Kudos to you all who can func­tion with­out a T.V.! I thought we were doing good with only allow­ing one in the house! My ques­tion is, how do I train my 3 girls to under­stand that even though EVERY­ONE else is watch­ing t.v. all the time doesn’t mean we will. My 6 year old pretty much thinks this is a pun­ish­ment and doesn’t real­ize it’s for her own good(boy did I just sound like a mom there or what!). I’m having a hard time find­ing a hobby for her to enjoy instead of the tube. HELP! As far as other topics for your simple living series…I would love to see people sim­plify Christ­mas and see it as it truly is. I am get­ting a little better at that every year, but I still find myself com­pletely stressed out by Christ­mas no matter how much I plan ahead and no matter how much we cut back. Some sug­ges­tions would be most appre­ci­ated!

    Reply
  18. Margo says:
    September 10, 2008 at 8:56 pm

    Hey Lind­say
    I haven’t actu­ally ever intro­duced myself to you via your blog, so I’m going to now! I found your blog some­how and have thor­oughly enjoyed it and have gleaned good info from it! I am a home­school mom with 4 sons, ages 6, 5, 3, and 1. I have been making baby steps the last few months to become health­ier house­hold! Last month was my first month to buy organic, fru­gally of course! I have been cook­ing with lentils and all sorts of beans…it’s great! I’ve been making cream cheese, whey, butter…it’s awe­some! It makes me so excited to know that God truly knew what he was doing when he designed a cow!! I also have started making all our own house­hold clean­ers. Anyway, that’s a little about me! I have put links to your web­site on my blog; I hope that’s okay :)

    Now, about your post today, we got rid of our TV about 5 months ago and it has been SUCH a good thing for our family!! My boys have really devel­oped a love for reading…me read­ing to them chap­ter books is a huge hit! Now, how­ever, I really have to mon­i­tor their com­puter time!! I rec­om­mend get­ting rid of TV to EVERY­ONE!

    Reply
  19. Natalie says:
    September 10, 2008 at 10:01 pm

    I love this post, and your entire blog! I have sim­i­lar feel­ings about tele­vi­sion, because it seems like the crux of the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the tra­di­tional family unit. I hate how even new houses are being built like apart­ments, so that each famliy member can go their sep­a­rate way and never inter­act or have their show inter­rupted. I even saw plans for one house with small kitch­enettes in the bed­rooms, so nobody ever had to eat meals together! How ter­ri­ble. And it just seems like at the root of all this is what amounts to an addic­tion to TV. People just cannot let it go.

    We have a TV, but our watch­ing is very lim­ited. My DH likes to watch our alma mater’s foot­ball games, and we watch a DVD once in awhile. How­ever, we don’t live and die by it- if we don’t watch, we don’t watch. End of story.

    We have decided that we will try to wean our­selves even fur­ther after read­ing a recent pub­li­ca­tion by the Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Pedi­actrics. They state that they have now found that there is a direct con­nec­tion between TV view­ing and Autism and ADHD, and rec­comend that chil­dren under the age of 5 years old not be allowed to watch any TV at all, even in mod­er­a­tion. The risk of devel­op­ing these dis­or­ders increases expo­nen­tially with the number of hours a child watches per day. WOW. And people STILL watch?!

    My DH and I both have ADHD, and have noticed a sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment in our abil­ity to focus and orga­nize since we have dras­ti­cally cut our TV watch­ing to almost noth­ing. I think it’s impor­tant that all people real­ize that moral pur­poses aside, there is a true, urgent, med­ical advan­tage to avoid­ing the TV. That com­bined with the garbage that is aired, and you have a per­fectly sound reason to cut it right out of your lives.

    Anyway, I would love to see you write “simplifying your pantry” and “simplifying your wardrobe” seg­ments. Because you do so much cook­ing from scratch, what kind of ingre­di­ents do you keep on hand, and how much? How do you store pro­duce, and for how long? What sort of things do you can and pre­serve? How much do you buy at a time? What items do you clas­sify as “basic needs,” that you always keep on hand, and what sort of things do you make out of them? As for your closet, I noticed in the photos that you posted of your bed­room that you have very few clothes. What do you con­sider to be the basic needs of a wardrobe? On what occa­sions would you pur­chase new clothes, and what do you do with the old? How many sets of mul­ti­ples do you keep (tennis shoes, under­gar­ments, socks, t-shirts, jeans, etc)? I am always look­ing for more ways to sim­plfy, and I would love to hear your input on these topics. Thanks again for all of your hard work in cre­at­ing this blog, you and your family seem like won­der­ful people that would be fun and fas­ci­nat­ing to meet, and happy belated birth­day!

    Reply
  20. Carmen says:
    September 11, 2008 at 6:24 am

    Hi, I love your blog too. It is very inspir­ing.

    Some ideas about other simple enter­tain­ment that may be good for fam­i­lies with chil­dren that are a little bit older:
    * Play­ing cha­rades - This is such a great was for the family to spend time together laugh­ing and learn­ing and having fun. Plus, it takes no invest­ment.
    * Making up sto­ries - My sister-in-law often uses her laptop to type up sto­ries that the kids make up. Than they either use cli­part to dec­o­rate it or print it out and illus­trate it them­selves with draw­ings, stick­ers, or stamps. It is a great way to help them explore their imag­i­na­tion. Also, they LOVE to hear their par­ents, aunts, and uncles read­ing their sto­ries back to them. It is such a gift and an affir­ma­tion for the kids.
    * Cook­ing and gar­den­ing together - In our house, cook­ing and gar­den­ing as a family is often our relax­ation and rest, rather than work - that is when we do them together as a family.
    * Danc­ing - This may seem silly to some, but we love to put on a CD and dance around the living room. DH and I take turns danc­ing with the kids, lift­ing them up and spin­ning them around. It’s good fun - but I don’t know about relax­ing!

    Reply
  21. Cammie says:
    September 11, 2008 at 6:40 am

    Hi, just a thought, and maybe you have already done this. Have you done sim­pli­fy­ing your time? Some­thing about sched­ules as far as being more effi­cient through­out the day.

    Reply
  22. Jay Peroni says:
    September 11, 2008 at 7:22 am

    As Chris­tians, we make con­scious deci­sions where we work, where we spend and donate money. Yet often our invest­ment and enter­tain­ment choices con­tra­dict our faith. We should strive to have con­sis­tency in our lives and follow God’s ways. He has set bound­aries for our pro­tec­tion. Using a moral com­pass as a litmus test is crit­i­cal! Great Post!

    Jay Peroni

    Reply
  23. Sara M. says:
    September 11, 2008 at 8:09 am

    My hus­band and I came to the con­clu­sion last spring that we were spend­ing way too much time watch­ing tv. It’s one of the dan­gers of having a DVR or TiVo. I think the writers’ strike was a bless­ing to us, because it forced us to take a second look at what our pri­or­i­ties were. The sad part about many of the shows we were watch­ing is that they were so “of the world” and not of God. He and I have agreed, though, that this year we will not be adding any new shows, and that we may even cut out sev­eral of the ones we were watch­ing.

    On another note, it’s not just the shows that are worldly, but the com­mer­cials are too. Some of them are just down­right raunchy, or they just are caus­ing us to want more than what we need (which I guess is the point of them to begin with). Some friends of ours stopped watch­ing sports because of the com­mer­cials during the sta­tion breaks.

    Another sim­plify topic - how long does one hold onto children’s clothes? My daugh­ter is 7, and then I have 3 boys … we still have all of her clothes.

    Reply
  24. Erin says:
    September 12, 2008 at 1:47 pm

    I would love ideas on sim­pli­fy­ing pho­tographs and sim­pli­fy­ing books. A lot of the books I read are Chris­t­ian books that I can’t get at a library so I’ve had to pur­chase them, but now they are piling up. How do I decide which ones I will read again? Which ones should I give away? Also, I have a prob­lem with children’s books piling up as well.
    And…what types of craft sup­plies do I really need to do craft/art projects with my kids, and what are a waste?
    What should I have on my desk and in my desk and what should I toss?
    Thanks for your help and for all of your posts!

    Reply
  25. Kate says:
    September 12, 2008 at 2:06 pm

    We have tv’s in our home. We watch mostly the cook­ing chan­nel, dis­cov­ery, the his­tory, the news etc. I do watch some real­ity shows. Per­son­ally I don’t see tv any­more tempt­ing than the inter­net. We also like the crime dramas.

    I was never much of a com­mer­cial watcher, com­mer­cial comes, turn the chan­nel!

    The family com­puter is in the living, I don’t believe in having com­put­ers in the children’s room. Both husband’s laptop and mine are in our homes offices. We don’t have any video games or any­thing, I’d rather have my chil­dren our skat­ing (ice,and rollerblad­ing) and our girls are involved in gym­nas­tics, and ballet.

    My hus­bands work late a lot of nights. But when he is able to come home early we all have dinner together.

    Reply
  26. Sarah says:
    September 12, 2008 at 6:09 pm

    I have really enjoyed read­ing your blog.
    In our family it is the com­puter not the tv that needs mon­i­tor­ing. The tv is hardly ever on but some­one is always on a com­puter.

    Reply
  27. lisa says:
    September 13, 2008 at 6:46 am

    As always I love your posts. I visit you weekly!! I will link to this sub­ject on my blog for I strug­gle with the TV sit­u­a­tion. I would love to get rid of ONLY TV in the house. I home­school two kids; 8 and 4. They both know that no one watches TV Monday through Thurs­day. Friday and week­ends we do watch tele­vi­sion. But, I have found they try to make-​up for what they have missed during the week. I have put a stop to watch­ing TV during the day on Friday. They have to wait until evening. My hus­band, is not yet ready to lose the TV alto­gether. He works hard and watches after the kids and I go to sleep. He does value family time when he comes home.

    Con­tinue to share your bless­ings through your words.

    Reply
  28. Muthering Heights says:
    September 14, 2008 at 7:23 pm

    You make sev­eral excel­lent points here!

    Reply
  29. Stephanie @ Keeper of the Home says:
    September 15, 2008 at 8:15 am

    I am totally in agree­ment with you, Lind­say! We also avoid tv and keep our movie watch­ing lim­ited (I would guess that we watch only 2-4 per month). We have found that we much prefer to spend the time together talk­ing or doing some­thing more pro­duc­tive. When spend­ing time with others, we would rather have an evening of fel­low­ship through talk­ing, or play­ing a fun game, etc.

    Not only does this pro­tect our family and encour­age us to spend our time more wisely, I think that it also gives our family much more time in gen­eral, to be involved in our church, to build into other rela­tion­ships, to spend time together with our kids, or to do pro­duc­tive work either inde­pen­dently or as a couple. We are so blessed by keep­ing this type of enter­tain­ment to a min­i­mum, and it’s good to see some­one writ­ing on the topic!

    Reply
  30. Rachel says:
    September 15, 2008 at 10:08 am

    in all hon­esty tv is a big time waster for me :)

    usu­ally not net­work tv..but watch­ing things on the inter­net, or on my laptop.. .or dvd’s.

    this post was very inter­est­ing and help­ful to me. thanks :)

    Reply
  31. Lindy says:
    October 6, 2008 at 9:43 pm

    It took me two or three years to con­vince my hus­band to chuck the TV (just for the summer). That was 9 years ago, and we are so happy not to have it.

    My family thinks we’re “extreme”, but it was one of the best things that we’ve done for our family life.

    Reply

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