6 Hacks To Fit In All Your TV Watching Every Week
The fall television season basically hasn’t even started yet and I’m already stressing out about how I’m going to make time to watch all the TV I want to watch. I wish I could go back to school and, like, get my Ph.D in Television Watching so it would actually be my academic responsibility to watch 40 hours a week (and, of course, I wish getting your Ph.D in Television Watching was a thing that actually existed in everybody’s real life).
It’s definitely a first world problem trying to find enough hours in the week to watch all your shows, but a first world problem is still technically a problem, and one I’ve been doing my best to solve over the course of my TV-watching life. Below are some hacks to get all your television viewing squeezed into your life.
1. Listen to a show with the volume turned all the way up while you do chores
Laundry folding is for comedies. I’m big into folding and putting away clothes while consuming my weekly dosage of The Mindy Project and New Girl. Comedies tend to be good for chores, because the need for three jokes per page tends to make comedies super talky, so you can take your eyes off the screen every once in a while. I’m not advocating just listening to comedies (you would miss all of Jess and Mindy’s outfits, plus the cuteness of the myriad people that populate their shows) but I’ve definitely enjoyed my joke-y shows while making my bed/sweeping the floor/installing curtains/the list goes on.
2. Watch a show while you eat lunch
If you need to socialize while you eat, by all means, do; but if you consider television as much of a friend as I do, save TV for lunch. You know what’s even tastier than that flatbread you’re eating? Scandal. That’s what.
3. Make an appointment with friends to watch a show together every week
I see my parents every Sunday, and my mom and I always finish up the day by watching The Good Wife together. It’s our thing. We love it. She’s out of town right now and it’s all kinds of depressing watching by myself with no one by my side with whom to fangirl out about Christine Baranski. The nice thing about making a weekly plan to watch a specific show with a friend/mom/both is you definitely watch that show every week and you get to bond with someone you love over art. It’s the best kill-two-birds-with-one-stone thing I do on a regular basis.
4. Save up all the episodes of a show for a sick day
Pick a show and just save it up for when you catch whatever flu goes around this year. You don’t even have to pick up a gross bug to watch your rainy day show! If you’re taking a mental health day or just had a crummy week and don’t feel like going out this Friday night, you can use those occasions to blast through your sick day TV show, too!
5. Watch a show with subtitles while you blow-dry your hair
I basically would not watch “America’s Next Top Model” or “Project Runway” were it not for this blowdrying hack. The trick is, you have to pick a super visual show for this hack, a show where you don’t care if you can barely hear the character’s voices/can’t hear them at all. This is a good hack to use while dishwashing, as well; but don’t blow-dry your hair and wash your dishes at the same time. That’s not going to turn out well for anyone.
6. Get up a little early to watch the first half of a show, stay up a little late to watch the second half
When I was in high school my fam got a TiVo and I used to use this trick with movies I recorded on AMC and TCM: I would watch the first half of a movie right before I went to bed and get up a little earlier than normal to watch the rest of the film. I still use this trick with TV shows, hour-long shows, and shows that don’t have crazy, commercial-break cliffhangers that would keep me up all night wondering what Olivia Pope is going to do about the president’s sexy lies! I’ve watched both NBC’s Parenthood and Showtime’s Masters of Sex with an eight hour sleep-break in the middle and it works just fine, girl. Scout’s honor.
