Last night, as I cooked dinner, I thought I should show you our small-space solution for not having TVs in every room.
In my last condo I didn’t need a TV, and the lack of one kept my apartment simple while saving precious space.
I liked watching movies and TV shows, though. The solution? My laptop computer – the perfect small-space replacement for a TV. It was compact and easy to store when not in use. And it was portable, so I could watch Netflix or Hulu or DVDs in any room of the apartment.
Whenever I wanted to work on an organizing or cleaning project, I’d just set up my laptop and watch a movie while tackling the task. Add a good glass of wine, and that’s a perfect Friday night!
Friends and family are baffled by our lack of TV in the living room, kitchen, etc. – but really, it’s not that tough. When I’m whipping up a lengthy meal, I just grab my laptop and set it up in the corner of the kitchen counter. See? Last night I was slicing and dicing while catching up on The Bachelorette.
When I was done cooking, away went the laptop, and my counter was clutter-free again. I can’t stand cluttered kitchen counters.
But sometimes it really hits me just how different my approach to TV is. While showing a friend our home recently, she looked at my bedroom and announced that the wall opposite the bed was perfect for a TV. My response: “Oh, no way. No TV in the bedroom.”
There’s two reasons for this: We don’t want our calm and simple bedroom to be marred by the presence of a big electronic box. It just feels wrong to me. Second, we don’t watch TV in bed. I think that would make us lazy.
And until last week, we were a completely TV-free household.
When we moved to this enormous (compared to the condo) house in the ‘burbs, Ryan wanted to get a TV for the basement rec room. (I’ll show you that space tomorrow.) We had the space, and it is fun to play games on the Wii, and work out on rainy days with Wii Fit. But I still feel it’s very much a luxury – both in terms of cost and in terms of space.
So now that you’ve heard my take on TV, what about yours? What are your views on TV? Are you reading this thinking that I’m absolutely nuts, or are you a fan of the no-TV small space solution? Am I the only one on this planet who totes a laptop from room to room just to watch movies while I work?
6 Comments
It’s funny that you ask, because we do the same thing! It just makes sense to use the laptop instead of having an extra TV or two. We do have a bigger flat screen tv in the living room for watching movies, but even then we sometimes end up hooking up the laptop to that screen to watch Netflix or stream videos from online!
I’m totally with you on not having a TV in the bedroom. It just seems weird to me! But I must confess that sometimes we bring the laptop in our room and watch our favorite shows in bed because it’s so darn comfy!
Except for a brief moment in time when we lived above you, I have been tv-free for almost 6 years (!) I love it. I love everything about not having a tv. The average American watches 28 hours of tv (I think this included movies and dvds too) per week. That’s more than 1 day per week! Crazy.
But again, I’m a nut who can fit everything she owns in a car. So don’t take my minimalism advice!
@Robin: I like to think that I’m not as badly off as the “average” American since I usually watch stuff while doing projects or chores. 🙂 But that’s pretty scary!
People are baffled that you don’t have a TV in the kitchen, etc.?! They would be really baffled by the fact that we have NO TV in the bedroom, kitchen, toilet, or tatami room! However, we DO have a TV (free!) in the living room that is only for Wii purposes. We don’t have cable and we don’t have TV service, period b/c we can’t understand Japanese! Tim is totally against a TV in the bedroom. We do use our laptops for movies all the time! Though I never watched TV at home much (maybe The Today’s Show, the evening news, and Grey’s Anatomy), I can say I miss the option of being able to turn it on if I want!
We have a TV in the spare bedroom (hubby’s TV–not even plugged in) and the main one in the living room (also hubby’s). As you can probably tell, a TV is a TV….whatever….he’s the “flat screen X inches”-type of guy. We don’t have our box (only way to way “TV”) hooked up to the main TV because we don’t watch shows. If we want to, there are a few on-lines sites we use. We mainly use it for DVDs or when hubby runs the laptop to the TV for football or (sometimes) baseball games.
That sounds a lot like us! We don’t have cable, so we only watch our shows on Netflix or Hulu, etc.