Our family just moved last weekend, and the entire move was a lot of hard work. It was our first move with kids, and I can’t believe how much stuff we had accumulated after living in the same place for over 8-years.  It wasn’t easy, but we are nearly done unpacking and starting to settle into our new home.

I am hoping we are not going to move again at least not for a long, long while.

We had some issues switching our internet service to the new house, and we ended up having no internet connection for over five days. At first, we were all panicking for different reasons, my husband and I both run our own businesses and do a lot of our work at home, so having no Internet could impact our businesses. The kids, on the other hand, were worried about not being able to access Netflix and watch their favourite shows.

We weren’t happy about having no internet connection at home for almost a week, but we both still had data plans on our phones, so we used those to stay somehow connected. Since we don’t have unlimited data and have to pay if we go above our plan’s usage, we were using our phones to check just the basics. No social media, no leisurely internet browsing or sitting watching Insta Stories for hours.

The first days were tough, think about it as a detox of some sort, then, something beautiful started happening. We all ended up picking up books we had not finished, the kids stopped asking for iPads and T.V and they starting playing more together, creating games to keep entertained, they played outside in the backyard more. I even had time to take care of myself and run some baths, no iPhone or laptop by my side to take my time or distract me.

We were all living in the moment! Enjoying life as it was happening, without our devices sucking all of our time and attention. The new nearly unplugged routine, using the internet for the basics was not bad at all…

That short period of not having internet hooked up at home helped me realize how many hours of my day are often wasted on social media. It is easy to go back to the old routine and spend hours on the phone checking random Insta Stories,  Facebook, etc. Hours of the day that I will never get back!

Working as a blogger and social media influencer doesn’t make it easy to completely disconnect or highly restrict the time you spend online, however, setting boundaries for myself and my children with regards to internet use is doable. Putting the phone away and allowing time without online distractions is not impossible.

So now, I am actually grateful for the unplanned online detox. I will still be checking Facebook, Instagram and social media daily. But, I will also be taking more intentional online breaks now and keeping tabs on my daily usage. Same with the children’s usage. I’ll be purposely leaving my phone behind a bit more and focusing on all the real-life moments.

How many hours a day do you spend on social media, doing non-essential internet browsing?