Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Technology

TV Turnoff Week

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beach

It’s National TV Turnoff Week.

I participated last April and wrote about it here and here. I had a wonderful, relaxing week last time, but I decided not to participate this week for a multitude of reasons. Most of all, I feel like I’ve found a balance between screen time and all the other things that make up my days.

My husband and I don’t watch much TV, but we do struggle with computer time. For awhile it seemed like when we were home together, one of us would invariably disappear into my office just to “see about that one thing” or “write a short email”, and then an hour or two would pass.

To solve the problem, we instituted an “electronic sunset”. Now we shut off the computer (and other electronics) at 7:00 every night. After that, it’s family time. Our self-imposed electronic sunset has helped us find a better balance – at least for now.

Are you participating in TV Turn-off Week? Have you found a balance between screen time and family time? I’d love to hear about it.

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Is ditching the TV the secret to happiness?

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A review of:
Living Outside the Box: TV-Free Families Share Their Secrets
by Barbara Brock
Published by Eastern Washington University Press, 2007

The statistics about television-watching in America should concern everyone:

  • The TV is on for 6 hours and 47 minutes a day in the average house.
  • The average person watches more than 4 hours of TV a day. (That adds up to 9 years of a 65-year-old’s life).
  • 66% of people watch TV while eating dinner.
  • 70% of daycares use TV to occupy kids during a typical day.

What does this mean for America’s kids? The average child spends 1500 hours a year watching TV, as compared to 900 hours in school, and sees on that flickering screen:

  • 8,000 murders by the end of elementary school.
  • 200,000 acts of violence by the age of 18.
  • 20,000 thirty-second commercials a year.

It’s hard to imagine that all this TV isn’t having detrimental effects on Americans, especially children. And sure enough, anecdotal evidence suggests that too much TV contributes to all kinds of behavioral problems at home and in school. Kids have attention problems. They fight with each other over TV programs. They beg for brand-name products. They grapple with weight issues and obesity. They don’t play outside in nature. They don’t read.

When we turn on the tube, do we turn off life?

In Living Outside the Box, Barbara Brock mentions the personal and cultural ills TV undoubtedly contributes to, but it’s not her focus. Instead she asks us to ponder what we miss out on when we’re sitting and mindlessly observing so much of our lives away. After all we could be reading, writing, painting, crafting, traveling, cooking, baking, hanging out with friends, playing instruments, singing, gardening, exploring, running, walking, or just playing. We could actually be living.

A very small minority of Americans (less than 1%) lives TV-free. Brock sent 500 of them surveys to find out about them. Who are these rebels? Well, they vary widely, but the striking thing is, most don’t miss TV at all. More surprising, their kids don’t seem to miss it. Brock’s research makes you wonder – are kids more addicted to the television, or are  their parents? Even if you can’t seem to drag your kids away from the tube, you might be surprised at their reactions if you shut it off altogether. Of kids who pledged to ditch TV for three months, many reported it as the best time in their lives.

TV night: Relaxing or stressful?

Brock makes a lot of cogent points, but one most registers with me: she points out how watching TV, even in small amounts, structures our time. For instance, you don’t want to miss a favorite program so you rush home from a night out, or you race through dinner, or you hurry through a phone call with a friend. You always have one eye on the clock.

Sure enough, we have a TV night in our house, and it’s always more stressful than other nights. We rush around to get everything done before the shows come on. Usually our evenings just sort of unfold. We turn on music, we talk, we play with the baby, we clean, we play games together, or we read. We glance at the clock occasionally, but it doesn’t dominate our nights. I feel better on these TV-free nights. I sleep better. But I’m not sure it’s the TV that makes me feel stressed, or just watching the clock.

The computer counts too.

I was surprised that by Brock’s definition, my family is already TV-free. Brock considers anything under six hours a week TV-free, and we watch about two to four hours. But every time I wanted to feel smug about my TV-free ways, Brock slipped in a mention of computer time. Oh yeah, that. I know aimless Googling and Facebooking doesn’t make me happy, but I find myself clicking away at the mouse a little too often.

Searching for balance.

Living Outside the Box is a fast and easy-to-read book. It will undoubtedly make you ponder how entrenched TV is in our lives and what kind of impact it’s collectively having on our society. Could Brock’s arguments convince a die-hard TV addict to change her ways? I doubt it. And if you lean toward the TV-free life already (which I suspect most people who read the book do) you may feel a tad hopeless reflecting on how entrenched television is in most people’s lives – a little like a teetotaler stuck in a tavern. After all, it doesn’t matter if you’re hellbent on knowing all your neighbors better than the cast of Survivor unless your neighbors feel the same way. However, if you’re thinking about ditching the TV, and concerned that it might turn your kids into social deviants, Brock’s research might ease your mind.

I picked up Living Outside the Box because my baby’s getting to the age where the television sucks him in. When he gazes at it and his eyes start to glaze over, my instinct is to shut it off – for good. It’s not that I think TV will destroy him or make him into a zombie. After all, I watched my share of I Love Lucy marathons as a kid. I just want his childhood to be full of music, books, friends, and nature. I want his time to be unstructured and unhurried. I want him to be satisfied with all of the comforts and joy we have in our lives, not to be constantly told he needs more toys, cereal, clothes, or candy to feel good. Most of all, I want him to have a real life, not a childhood spent observing fictional kids on television living.

But I’m just not convinced we should put the TV out with the garbage. One of those four hours of TV we usually watch each week is The Bill Moyer’s Journal on PBS, and every time I start thinking of TV as evil, I see Moyer’s lopsided grin. That show, and a few others – like Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under, and Freaks and Geeks – have added something to my life. They’ve make me think, or laugh so hard I can’t breathe, or see the world a little bit differently. They’ve made me happy. I know the real answer is to only invite in the television programs that stimulate my family. But what a challenge that is – especially with kids.

Celebrate TV Turn Off Week – April 20-26, 2009

Brock did inspire me to give up all of my screen-time for TV Turn-Off Week – (gulp) even my precious Internet. That means I won’t be blogging next week … but I’ll be doing lots of living, which will contribute to future blogs. On Sunday we’re putting in a new vegetable garden and adopting a flock of hip, urban, backyard chicks. I’ll be journaling those endeavors for the blog. And I’ll have lots of time to research for future blogs using my favorite sources – good, old-fashioned books.

What do you think?

I’d love to hear how TV fits into your life. Do you have TV-free or TV-addicted kids? Have you struck some kind of balance? Are you participating in TV Turn-Off Week? Why or why not?

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How I learned to stop worrying and love the bread machine

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I have an uncomfortable relationship with technology. I’m conflicted about most of it – the car, the TV, the electric razor, even the “labor-saving” devices that populate our home. Oh, I use them. Sometimes I even have my washer, dryer, dishwasher, bread machine, and vacuum cleaner all going at the same time. But I have this annoying feeling that won’t seem to go away – like a mockingbird chirping under a bedroom window night after night – that maybe all of this technology isn’t making most of us happier.

Take the bread machine. This handy invention has its roots back at the turn of the twentieth century. Joseph Lee, an African American proprietor of an inn and catering business in Massachusetts, invented and patented the first dough-kneading machine for commercial bakeries. The large machine reportedly did the work of six men, and created better tasting, “more hygienic” loaves. Nearly all commercial bakeries automated their bread-making production by the 1950s. Then in 1986 a Japanese company produced a bread machine small enough to sit on the kitchen counter. In the three decades since, bread machines have become inexpensive and commonplace, transforming many households across Japan, Europe, and the U.S. – including mine.

I use my bread machine twice a week. I set it to the dough cycle, then transfer the dough to a loaf pan for its final rise and baking. I love it for so many reasons.

  • It creates perfect loaves every time. A person (not to mention anyone in particular) might not always produce a perfect loaf. She might knead the dough, let it rest, knead it again, let it rest, put it in the oven, bake it for thirty minutes, then excitedly open the oven door to find a loaf that – how shall we say this? – is the consistency of a block of concrete. But the bread machine? It never fails. It is a straight A student.
  • It makes what would be a laborious process nearly effortless.
  • It makes my house smell good all day.
  • I use organic, whole-grain ingredients, so the bread is nutritious and lacks any nasty preservatives.
  • I never buy the $5.00 loaves at the health food store anymore.

The bread machine is a magnificent invention. It deserves my undying devotion. I should celebrate its existence every day.

But instead, I sort of resent it. I just don’t get that swell of pride, that sense of accomplishment, that giddiness that I get when I use my own two hands to turn flour, water, and yeast into bread. And when I take a loaf to a potluck or give one away as a gift, and someone asks if I made it, I hesitate, I stammer, I feel like a cheater – like the kid caught red-faced copying off my neighbor’s paper. Like a total fraud.

Wasn’t life more satisfying when we made everything with our hands?

Okay, I admit, I’ve been known to fantasize about halcyon days past – times when people had face-to-face friends rather than Facebook friends, when folks exercised outdoors rather than in front of their wiis, when people spent time interacting with other people instead of zoning out in front of Lost or CSI. So I guess it’s in that same vein that I imagine that when keeping up a household was more handiwork and less switching on different machines, housework was surely more laborious, but didn’t it feel more, well, authentic?

Maybe you also find yourself waxing poetic about a mythical technology-free past. Maybe you glare at your bread machine or your Cuisinart; or you wince at the buzz of the dryer; or you heave a sigh as you drag the vaccuum out of the closet? Well, I think I might’ve found a cure. Pick up The Forgotten Arts and Crafts by John Seymour, and turn to the section on the housewives of eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain.

Seymour sets out to celebrate the difficult and creative work women have done in homes throughout time, work that he asserts could not have been done as well, if at all, by men. If you read the chapter, you will undoubtedly agree with Seymour that the housewives of yesteryear were a noble bunch. You may also mourn with him for the Americans who live in “bleak and cheerless” shells of houses “glued to that flickering screen.” However, if you’re prone to dreaming about a utopian past, you might also feel a bit less ambivalent about your washer, dryer, stove top, vacuum cleaner … and yes, your bread machine. Take these three common Victorian-era chores:

1. Cooking without electricity or gas

Until the mid-nineteenth century, women cooked everything on an open hearth in an iron cauldron, spit, or griddle over the fire, and they baked bread in dutch ovens hidden in the ashes. It was a messy affair. Dollops of soot flopped down the chimney and burst into the room, and pots were hopelessly blackened with soot.

The first cast-iron kitchen range was invented in 1780, but they didn’t become readily available until the 1840s. Around then coal also gradually took over from wood as the most popular domestic fuel. Ranges, especially closed ranges, transformed the kitchen, but cooking was still a laborious task. The cook had to sweep the chimney and clean the flues and dampers that channeled heat around the range. And every morning, she had to clean, black-lead, polish, and re-light the range.

The cast iron stove of days past is not as mysterious to me as it may be to some, as I grew up with a wood-burning one in my kitchen. We used it mainly to keep the kitchen warm during the winter months, but we also cooked stews in the oven and toasted tortillas on the top. It certainly made our kitchen a more beautiful, cozy place. But relying on it for one’s entire sustenance is a different matter. Cooking as we know it – with handy oven dials set to exact temperatures and relatively predictable cooking times – is a strikingly modern invention – one that I plan not to take for granted from now on.

2. Doing dishes without a faucet

Housewives rubbed ashes on greasy dishes to make soap, and for more stubborn dirt, they used sand or brick dust. Of course, sinks didn’t have faucets until recently. So where did water come from? Rainwater collectors, ponds, and wells. A housewife heated the water in boilers over the fire or hobs that sat by the side of the fire. As long as she kept her water pots full, she had a constant supply of hot water that she could carry to the sink when she needed it.

By the mid-nineteenth century, water was piped to many towns in England, but an entire street usually shared one common faucet. It wasn’t until after World War II that poorer homes were outfitted with indoor water faucets.

3. Washing laundry without the spin cycle

In most households, Monday was set aside for the wash, because the housewife cooked meat on Sunday, leaving plenty leftover for Monday’s meal. Saved the task of cooking, she could devote Monday to laundry. She drew water, carried it to the house, and made soap. Then she spent the whole of the day “soaking, pounding, rubbing, boiling, starching, rinsing, and drying” the family’s clothing. She had a number of tools at her disposal – tubs, boards, dollies, paddles, bats, and tongues. She used human urine or pig manure to bleach linens, and she starched shirts with wheat, potatoes, or rice. Drying linen was no easy task until the invention of the upright wringer in the nineteenth century. Virtually all clothing needed to be ironed with flat irons heated on the range top. Poorer housewives had to start the wash at night, just before retiring to bed, because their family members only possessed one pair of clothes.

Making peace with the Magic Chef©

John Seymour convinced me. The housewives of days past were super heroes. And I recommend picking up The Forgotten Arts and Crafts, because we can undoubtedly learn a lot from them. They managed without many of the things a lot of us are striving to use less of – oil, processed food, and plastic to name a few. Their work was relentless, back-breaking, and filthy, and they seemed to do it with grace. Seymour recounts a conversation he had with an old woman in Herefordshire many years ago. She gave him an account of the weeks’s work when she was a child, and he replied, “‘Wasn’t it all a lot of work?’ ‘Yes, she said. ‘But nobody had ever told us there was anything wrong with work.’.” We’d probably all do well to remember that wisdom. But if I had a time machine, I think I’d stay right where I am, with the Magic Chef© churning away on the kitchen counter.

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