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I mentioned in my post yesterday that music being a central part of our life is due in large part to some choices we made about how we set up our house.  Since 2006 when we moved back from Honduras (the first time) Erika and I have had a running conversation where I propose getting rid of our TV and Erika says no.  Not really much of a conversation I suppose.  

When we moved to the house in New Lenox we had some hard choices to make about how we set up the house.  It’s a small house (much as Erika doesn’t like me to say that) and furniture arrangements make all the difference in it feeling small versus tiny.  The living space is really just one medium sized room with a combined living room/dining room.  No matter how we arranged it, if we oriented the living room around a TV the room shrank.  This was my moment to propose ditching the TV all together.    

So we put the TV in the garage and arranged the furniture around the perimeter of the room to open up the space as much as possible.  It worked.  The kids now have a space in the middle of the room to play (and pile toys for safe keeping while they’re not playing).  Aside from the pile though, the space is much more open and makes the room feel like a place to live.  

As for TV – worry not, we haven’t gone off the grid completely.  I had bought a TV tuner for my laptop before we left for Honduras so we can watch TV on the laptop.  It’s small, but a side benefit is that we can use it as a DVR/Tivo for free and it records shows right to the laptop.  Our desk is right next to the couch so it’s easy to just pull it over on the coffee table when we watch TV together in the evenings.  We also got rid of cable.  Most of what we watch is on the networks (easily accessible with a cheap antenna stuck under the desk) and the rest we can watch online.  Hulu has changed our lives along with the networks’ habit of putting full length versions of their shows on their website.  I can watch the Daily Show, 30 Rock and House on Hulu, Lost and Scrubs on ABC.com and Notre Dame basketball on ESPN360.  What more so I need?   

So my “throw away the television” pitch isn’t exactly as radical as it sounds.  It has, however, changed the way we watch TV.  There’s an intentionality about what we watch and when we watch it.  We watch less TV and tend to watch better quality stuff (with the obvious exception of the Grey’s Anatomy/Private Practice embarassment that I’m loathe to admit to).  The kids watch things we’ve taped from PBS with Sid the Science Kid being the latest favorite.  In general we are much more likely to watch TV because we want to, not because it’s on.     

And the music?  Those load speakers I talked about yesterday are plugged into the laptop which is much more likely to be used as a very expensive radio than as a computer or a TV.  We have great speakers in the living room and some wireless speakers in the kitchen which are very important to my nightly dishes routine.  

The combination of all of these choices has resulted in a great environment where our living room truly is a place to live.  Where TV is something that is great in moderation, where there is space to play, where music is an integral part of our daily lives and most importantly where my reward for doing the dishes is a little Ryan Adams.

Note:  For those of you that get the e-mail version of the blog, I’m not sure why but the photos have a tendency to show up in the wrong place in the e-mail.  It shouldn’t be a big deal, the layout just doesn’t look as nice.  Remember you can always click through to the actual post to see the original version.