Monday Q&A-Breakfast, Lunch, and Cheap Entertainment

Every Monday, I answer a question or two from my readers. If you have a question you’d like me to answer(it doesn’t have to be about frugality pe se….if you wonder something about homeschooling, or about me personally, for example, ask away!), leave a comment on this post, or email me(thefrugalgirl {at} gmail {dot} com) with the “Q&A” in the subject, and I’ll answer it in a future Monday post.
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1. My fellow blogger Frugal Dreamer wrote in with a question this week.

What do you and your family do for entertainment?

I know a lot of families rely on TV for their source of entertainment, so I am curious to see what you guys do!

Before I answer the question, I should say that we do actually still have a TV…it’s just not in our living room(and that is not my TV in the picture above! Ours is an older model that weighs about 5000 pounds.). We put it in the kids’ playroom, where it’s used for video games and DVDs(which are limited…the older two get 30 minutes of game time once their school is done, chores are done, and their rooms are clean). While we don’t have cable, we do own an antenna, so if there’s something we REALLY want to see on broadcast TV, we can set that up and get some main channels. It is true that TV does not make up a large portion of our entertainment, though, and that’s just fine with me.

So, cheap entertainment! Umm…I don’t really find that I spent a lot of time wondering how to entertain myself cheaply. My life is busy and full, and I never lack for something to do. Left to myself, I would probably work myself to death, but my husband is good about making me sit down and relax sometimes.

Incidentally, I think that part of the reason that I don’t feel the need for a lot of typical entertainment devices is that I find joy in my work. Even when I’m doing a task I don’t particularly enjoy, I still derive enjoyment from accomplishing something(cleaning a toilet isn’t fun, but I like having a clean toilet). And I feel better if I’ve spent several hours actively doing something than if I’ve watched TV for several hours.

When we have some leisure time, here are some things we do.

1) When the weather is nice, we go for a walk in our neighborhood. The younger two ride in the stroller, and the older two walk or rollerblade along with us.

2) We play Wii games together. My 8 year old daughter and I like to play DDR together, and my husband enjoys playing Mario Kart and other games with the older two. Sonia and Zoe are very entertained just by watching us play the Wii, and Sonia can play some of the easier Wii games.

3) We watch DVDs. We’re fairly conservative when it comes to what we’ll let ourselves and our kids watch, so there’s not a ton of movies out there that we feel comfortable watching. But, when a good, clean movie comes out, we often will rent it from Redbox($1 a night is a good deal in my book). We also check out DVDs from the library. The library is especially good for older movies, which are normally not available from Redbox.

4) We play outside. Joshua and Lisey both like to play catch with my husband, and Sonia and Zoe just like to run around.

5) My husband and I enjoy reading through books together. Most often we do this in the evening…my husband reads aloud to me while I iron or do some other mindless task(I pay attention better if my hands are busy).

6) We get together with friends. Instead of going out to a restaurant with friends, we invite friends over to our house, or sometimes we meet at a park and grill out.

There are plenty of things that we like to do individually as well. I like to read books(mostly nonfiction) and magazines(about photography, cooking, and scrapbooking), take pictures, scrapbook, blog, and read other blogs(I read photography blogs and some personal finance ones). My kids like to read(and be read to), they do puzzles, they color and draw, and they do all sorts of other imaginative stuff too. They have no problem entertaining themselves without the TV, that’s for sure, and the things they like to do are not expensive either.

As a post script to this answer, I should add that I’m not at all trying to say that everyone should give up TV or even that everyone should give up their cable. That’s just what we decided was right for us at this point in time(mostly for reasons that weren’t financial, as we were only paying $15 a month for our cable).
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2. For a really short second Q&A, I wanted to mention that Mona asked a question I’ve answered before, about what we eat for breakfast and lunch. I don’t typically plan those meals out, so I don’t include them in my menu plans. I wrote a post a while back about what we do eat, though, and you can find that here.

Photo by Kansir