unplugged: let the games begin!

In addition to my design blog, I also follow several hippie-ish, green-living blogs, and they're all talking about the same thing: unplugging! The idea intrigued me, and I wanted to give it a shot. These days we're all so very, very dependent on our electronics. We send emails, browse the web, watch our TiVo or a movie, then hop in bed ... after we check our email one last time, of course! Sadly it's just not possible to totally unplug. You have to have your phone and your computer to get by in the world, these days ... but there's really no reason that you have to use any of it at night when you could be spending time with family.

I mentioned the idea to my husband on Sunday, and the first thing he said was "how will I check my email?" ... we're very addicted to our email, haha. But after I explained it to him (you can check it up until dinner time), he was excited to try. We decided to start this week! Our agreement is that Monday - Thursday we will put the computers, phones, TV, DVD's, Roku, etc. away, right before dinner, and we'll stay unplugged for the rest of the evening.  Then we'll just do whatever people did for fun before the TV, cell phones and internet made their way into everyone's home!

It ended up being a lovely evening. We took our time cooking a delicious meal (baked salmon, steamed veggies and whole wheat pasta), we played Bananagrams, and we read aloud in our current book.

We even had time to fold some laundry, tidy up the house and go to bed a little earlier than usual! It was really great. We're already making plans for fun things to do while we're "unplugged" this week, and I'm especially excited about our plan for tonight. Stay tuned!

Dogs are always unplugged, so Jemima just chose to make a "fort" (her new favorite pastime) and hit the hay early.

Have you ever tried anything similar? Feel free to join us!