Insulating entertainment.

We do not have television in our house. It is nice to stay away from the bombardments of adverts and also not to get sucked into a mindless vegetative state, watching programs that might be of limited interest, just because they are there.

But we do love films and that is why we have built up a bit of a DVD collection. You can pick up DVDs these days for a euro, sometimes even fifty cents and we have been getting a couple every week for the last few years. Many people ask us why we bother, why not just watch them online, but there is a specific reason for this.

We do not think wifi is a good thing, there is mounting evidence to suggest that it causes immense harm to people and avoiding wifi is one of the main reasons behind choosing to live in the most rural part of Ireland. In our house we only turn on our internet when absolutely necessary and always turn it off at night. THIS is an informative video on the topic that we can highly recommend. An old DVD player and TV work perfectly well for our entertainment needs.

In the last couple of weeks we have been working on a combined art-studio and workshop in the shed and we insulated the ceiling to prevent condensation. The prevailing wind comes from the West here and we wanted a bit of insulation on that wall too. We also needed somewhere to keep our DVD collection easily accessible so the perfect solution was to build shelves all across the wall at a close distance and fill them up completely with DVDs. We are not quite there yet, but we will continue to trawl the local charity shops, increasing our film collection and get a warmer work space at the same time.  It also feels good to support the charity shops and keep the DVDs out of landfill. Recycling at its best!

For years all our DVDs have been jumbled up in boxes and it is immensely satisfying to now divide them up into categories and get an overview. We even got to use one of our favourite tools, the DYMO label maker, to print out the category labels.

 It is difficult to explain the joyful feeling of not having to go out into the dark, damp shed anymore, armed with a torch and stumble around amongst old paint tins, bicycles, endless storage boxes and tools to possibly come across a flick you feel like watching. The worst scenario was when you had a particular film in mind but had to come back inside, empty handed and annoyed after a fruitless attempt of retrieving it.

Now the shed it flooded with light from the window, glass door and the light colours on the walls and ceiling. It is pure joy to gaze upon the rows of films and consider what we might feel like watching. Some of our favourite film categories are the Irish, International, Drama and Anime.

Seeing all the films on the shelves and being able to pick them up and read a bit on the back cover makes it very easy to choose a film that we are in the mood for. It is also lovely to be able to re-watch favorites whenever we want. To avoid wifi as much as possible is however the biggest win in the situation.