{"id":45549,"date":"2026-02-16T13:11:48","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T13:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/my-family-gave-away-our-tv-before-our-cross-country-move-its-been-5-years-and-we-still-havent-replaced-it\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T13:11:48","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T13:11:48","slug":"my-family-gave-away-our-tv-before-our-cross-country-move-its-been-5-years-and-we-still-havent-replaced-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/my-family-gave-away-our-tv-before-our-cross-country-move-its-been-5-years-and-we-still-havent-replaced-it\/","title":{"rendered":"My family gave away our TV before our cross-country move. It&#8217;s been 5 years, and we still haven&#8217;t replaced it."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/698b58ead3c7faef0ecdfc5d?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The writer, her husband, and their daughter playing a game on the floor of their living room.\"\/><figcaption>captionTK<\/p>\n<p>Jennifer Nied<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>When my family moved cross-country, we opted to leave our TV behind \u2014 and then never replaced it.<\/li>\n<li>We realized that we liked living and raising our 4-year-old daughter without a television.<\/li>\n<li>Now, we spend more time than ever reading and exploring the outdoors.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>On a recent trip, my daughter and I were tossing her stuffed animal around the hotel room. The toy spun around near the ceiling and came to rest on the corner of the TV, high above our heads.<\/p>\n<p>My daughter pointed and tried to explain where the animal landed, on the, the, the &#8230; she didn&#039;t have the word for &quot;TV.&quot; Yep, we had to tell our 4-year-old what that big, black rectangle was called.<\/p>\n<p>It&#039;s not because she&#039;s behind on vocab \u2014 we just don&#039;t have one in our home.<\/p>\n<p>Five years ago, when my family moved across the country, we decided to ditch our old TV to travel with fewer boxes. It wasn&#039;t worth the extra hassle to have another &quot;handle with care&quot; item in the truck.<\/p>\n<p>We quickly realized that we liked our lifestyle without a television and decided not to replace it. Whenever I mention this to a friend, or someone comes over and sees a big painting where a TV usually is, they look at me like I have two heads.<\/p>\n<p>For our family, though, this living-room setup feels completely natural.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Without a TV, no-screen rules are automatic and easy to enforce<\/strong><\/h2>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/698b5ac4e1ba468a96abc408?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The writer sitting at a table, painting with watercolors with her child.\"\/><figcaption>captionTK<\/p>\n<p>Jennifer Nied<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>When our daughter was born, my husband and I set a goal to avoid screen time altogether for as long as possible. Not having a TV helps us achieve that.<\/p>\n<p>We didn&#039;t introduce any movies or shows to her at home, and we&#039;re still going strong four years later. At first, it was harder for us as parents to get creative with new activities, but we enjoyed the challenge.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, we spend a lot of time reading books and playing games. My daughter and I visit the neighborhood library together at least once a week. I&#039;ve started reading more as well, often opting for a bedtime book myself instead of staring at my iPad.<\/p>\n<p>We spend lots of quality time together, too. Some nights, we&#039;ll run races in loops around the kitchen and living room or pretend a cardboard box is an airplane and zoom around. Now that she&#039;s older, we&#039;ve started playing board games.<\/p>\n<p>I know we can&#039;t keep screens and tech out of our lives forever, but we hope we&#039;ve given her a solid foundation of analog alternatives that she can turn to as she grows.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>We spend extra time outside in all kinds of weather<\/strong><\/h2>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/698b5aefd3c7faef0ecdfc81?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The writer&#039;s child snowboarding in front of a hill in Colorado.\"\/><figcaption>captionTK<\/p>\n<p>Jennifer Nied<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>My husband and I love hiking, running, snowboarding, and more. We&#039;ve kept up our outdoor activities and found ways to include our daughter.<\/p>\n<p>No matter the weather, we&#039;re moving and playing outside. If it&#039;s raining, we do a puddle-jump walk. If it&#039;s warm and sunny, we slather on the SPF and dive into the pool or take a bike ride around the playground.<\/p>\n<p>A snowy day means taking the sled to the park for laps on the hill, snowball fights, and building a snowman or a fort.<\/p>\n<p>There&#039;s no TV by the couch beckoning us to linger like we used to. Weekends spent watching Netflix or sports are a distant memory. I think we&#039;re all staying healthier as a result.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>We do break out an iPad occasionally, mainly for big sports moments<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>There are a few times I do miss having a big screen, like when our home team makes it to the playoffs or the Olympics roll around.<\/p>\n<p>We usually get around this, though, by planning watch parties with friends \u2014 or setting up the iPad to catch special moments. When Faith Kipyegon was shooting for a record-breaking mile in under four minutes, I pulled up the stream and watched with my daughter on the kitchen floor.<\/p>\n<p>All in all, though, we have no regrets and don&#039;t plan on purchasing a TV anytime soon. The benefits of living without one \u2014 and the sight of our daughter&#039;s artwork hung on the wall where a TV would usually be \u2014 matter more than any confused looks.<\/p>\n<p>I&#039;m fine being the no-TV family, exploring the world instead of watching it on a screen.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>captionTK Jennifer Nied When my family moved cross-country, we opted to leave our TV behind \u2014 and then never replaced it. We realized that we liked living and raising our 4-year-old daughter without a television. Now, we spend more time than ever reading and exploring the outdoors. On a recent trip, my daughter and I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45550,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-45549","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}