Cable TV… so many people have it… so many people talk about what they are watching… so many people are cutting it out of their lives… we’re part of the last group.
Adapting to Life Without Cable TV
My husband and I had been talking about changing our cable for years. At first he wanted to switch over to satellite… he drooled over the sports packages that they offered. Year after year passed though and we were still with our cable provider.
When Noah was born we contemplated cutting cable all together. We had become Netflix fans and were watching a lot of movies… the thing that stopped us from doing that though was the sports. My husband just couldn’t imagine not being able to watch his beloved football, hockey and baseball games. I’ll admit that I was happy that I wouldn’t be losing my TLC and HGTV either.
Fast forward 19 months… we now have two children that need our attention. We also have upgraded our TV and have bought a Blu-Ray player that streams Netflix… by this point we are complete Netflix junkies and loved that we could watch movies without having to wait for new disks to be sent. We were still considering canceling cable, but 1) Noah was hooked on the Sprout channel and 2) it was the end of hockey season and our team had a good chance to make it into the playoffs. There was no way we would cancel now… or so I thought.
I was driving home from my mom’s house one day when Ray broke the news to me over the phone. That night would be our last night with cable… but not just any cable… with HD cable. I was speechless! How could that happen? What did he do? Forget about the sports, how could we live without Sprout? Didn’t my husband know that that one channel was the only thing that helped keep me sane some days?!?
It seems that he had not intended on canceling our cable when he called, but one thing led to another and that’s exactly what happened. We had been downgraded to the most basic of basic programs and nothing more. Even though we don’t watch much TV here in the house, I was still a little sad to see it go… mainly because I knew that I could count on Sprout to keep Noah calm when he woke at 6am… he would sit and watch while Ray was driving home from work and I was cooking… you get the picture.
It’s been almost four weeks since we’ve down-graded and I have to admit that I don’t miss cable nearly as much as I thought I would. We are utilizing the streaming feature of Netflix to get Noah his daily “Sprout” fix. They have many of the shows he used to watch on there, which is great. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t odd not having the guide to let us know what show is playing on which channel… but then again we don’t have as large of a selection of channels available, so it’s not that hard to just channel surf.
In the end, I think my husband made the right decision… just don’t tell him that I said that! 😉
It’s been over two years since I wrote this and we are still cable free… sure there’s talk of signing up with one of the satellite providers every fall {hello football season!}, but so far we haven’t “given in” to that temptation yet. I can honestly say that I don’t really miss cable. The TV is on much less now than it was 2 years ago… the kids are allowed to watch either PBS or selected “Mama approved” shows on Netflix. So yes, we still have Netflix streaming and now also use both Vudu and Redbox for new releases. We don’t have a lot of “shows” that we watch, but Ray and I do have a movie night at least once or twice a week after the kids have gone to bed.
I won’t lie, while I don’t miss it, there are still times when having cable would be nice… there are a number of White Sox games that we miss out on… games that I know we would be watching otherwise… but that’s really the only thing that I miss.