#192: How I'm Taking Back My Life From My iPhone, Living Like It's 1995

Today's episode is a Part II of breaking free from cell phone addiction by turning smartphones into "dumb phones." Reclaiming our attention through intentional boundaries, mainly by living like it's 1995 again.

• Deleting apps like banking, email, shopping, and browsers forces intentional computer-based usage
• Setting boundaries like no phone before 7am and designated check-in times reduces compulsive checking
• Switching to paper grocery lists and physical tracking systems eliminates constant phone dependency
• Leaving the phone in the car during errands creates freedom from constant digital connection
• Using an actual camera instead of phone camera brings back nostalgic imperfection in photography
• Placing the phone in one location at home (like an old house phone) prevents room-to-room carrying
• Weekly 25-hour "phone Sabbath" provides complete digital detox from Friday to Saturday night

If this journey inspires you to make changes in your own phone habits, I'd love to hear about your experience!

www.daraboxer.com

Transcript

Welcome to Screen-Free Journey

Dara Boxer 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to the Raw and the Cooked, a weekly podcast that provides simple routines around the home plus raw and honest book reviews. My name is Dara, I'm a Midwestern stay-at-home mom to four young kids and I thrive on simplicity. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode. Today I wanted to continue with the conversation I had started a couple weeks back, just with my journey to becoming as screen-free as possible and trying everything I can to break my cell phone addiction.

Dara Boxer 0:30

The iPhone has been in existence for close to two decades at this point, and it's really evident to almost anyone with eyes and ears and a brain that it's very addicting and it's we're not getting in a good, we're not. It's not taking, it's not taking us anywhere. Good, right, and as ironic as it is, like these little tiny devices that can fit in our back pocket, that gives us access to everything we want and to make our lives easier and more simple, and like running smoothly, like it's almost doing the opposite, right, like, does anyone else feel? Like the irony of it? It's just so insane and so I'm not completely ready to turn in my iPhone for a dumb phone, but I have done all of the steps you should do to turn it into essentially just treat my cell phone like a dumb phone, and it's becoming more and more of a movement. They are coming out with dumb phones where your only features it's a some of them are flip phones, which I find adorable and just like so, like oh, that pulls at my heart. Dumb phones where your only features it's a some of them are flip phones, which I find adorable and just like so, like oh, that pulls at my heart but where your only features really are calls and texts and that's it. That's it. You have no internet access.

Dara Boxer 1:34

I did meet a mom at my kid's school who does have Waze on her phone, but that's it. Like it's calling, texting and Waze, and there is a camera so you can take photos, but you know it's they're pretty pixelated, the quality isn't great, but the point is is like a lot of people are taking the steps to to get back to a place where things actually were more simple, and so I kind of wanted to update you. I've been going about this journey for a little while now and I just wanted to kind of like update you and let you know how it's going, and the more of my friends I speak to about this, the more interesting I find it that, like we all feel that weird magnetic pull that we can't quite explain. But like we all know the phone, it's just like there's something super poisonous about it. So I wanted to share what I did to scale back on my phone, what has been actually surprisingly easy, what's been a little challenging, and how I am making all of this work as a millennial mom of four.

Phone Isn't Essential: Initial Steps

Dara Boxer 2:35

Okay, so the first step was to realize that my phone really isn't that essential. I started to ask myself, like what do I want to use my phone for other than texting and calling? And the truth is not much. Okay, so I still rely pretty heavily on podcasts and audio books and my maps. Uh, when I drive or go somewhere where I'm not totally sure how to get to, um, I'm not going to delete podcasts, I'm not going to delete audio books, like I think that's a fabulous function, and so they can stay. You know, music apps can stay, whatever, but anything that can be done from a computer should, should go. Um.

Dara Boxer 3:12

I talked a couple of weeks ago about not shopping from my phone, so I sort of started this new system. Just, I'll get back to apps in a second, but I decided that I'm not picking up my phone before 7am. It's insane. I have so much to do in the morning between packing bags and water bottles and lunches and getting breakfast on the table and making sure that the kids are awake and starting to get through their morning routine. There is no reason to check my phone until 7am. And a part of me almost wants to push that even later, until 8am, because, like, what's the point, right? Like maybe there's an emergency text, but probably not. So I decided to designate check-in times to check my phone for again. I don't even know why, but those like small emergencies, like after the big kids leave for school, maybe mid-morning, maybe before preschool drop-off, right?

Dara Boxer 4:00

Emails that is something that is new and I noticed looking through my screen time and my pickup history, email is somewhat of a compulsion for me. It was always the first app I would pick up and check on my phone and I don't even know why. I don't have a job that relies heavily on email. I'm not expecting emails, it's just a compulsion. To just look at it. I couldn't explain it. So I decided that I was no longer going to check email for my phone either, so I had deleted that last month and I check email for my computer like a normal human being from like 1999. Any online shopping that I need to do most of our shopping online comes from Amazon and Target.

Dara Boxer 4:39

Again, only on my laptop I turned on grayscale. Again, I'm not really into the sign, I don't really understand it, but there's something about getting rid of those candy color, like you know. Just I don't know. Like there's something about it. Like the bright, beautiful colors is like we're just like drawn to it, even if, like, we're not looking or doing anything Like. So grayscale is turned on and again, I'll talk about that a little bit later.

Deleting Apps and Going Grayscale

Dara Boxer 5:02

And then I deleted all of my notifications, like all of them. Like I don't even get a notification, I have to open up my texts or my calls to see if I missed something, because I don't want it to pop up and I don't want the temptation to be like, oh, my phone buzzed, like who is it or what is that Right? So okay, so those were some steps I took about a month ago and so when I wanted to really step above and really go above and beyond um, again I wanted to realize that my phone wasn't essential. So I went through all of the apps that I have on my phone and just started deleting them one by one, like the low hanging fruit, like banking apps, budgeting apps gone. My email, again, that was a hard one because I was constantly checking it. I don't know why, but now again I only check it on my computer and that's just so great for me.

Dara Boxer 5:51

Safari, the internet deleting that app off my phone as well, that was a big one too, but I don't want to scroll. I feel like if I have it, I'm going to scroll, I'm going to log in, I'm going to check X, I'm going to online shop through Safari. I had already deleted Amazon and Target those two apps from my phone, so any online shopping I did was from my computer. But you can still do that if you log in through Safari. So any random question I had or wanted to ask ChatGPT something I would have to just save it for when I was in front of my computer, when my kids were napping not compulsively checking it while I was waiting to check out of Trader Joe's, and had, like an urgent question that I needed to look up on Safari on my phone, right then, and there, like nope, can just wait.

Dara Boxer 6:37

So, again, just going through all of my apps one by one and like what is a priority and what can I not use my phone for, one of the things that was very hard for me actually to delete was the app Clue. That's a period tracker, and I have been a paid Clue user since 2013. That is 12 years, four pregnancies worth of data Like that was a big time. I'm embarrassed to say that I did track my periods and my discharge and all of that goodness on an app, because, good Lord, talk about privacy. But I decided, moving forward, to end my subscription and delete the app and I am now tracking my cycle with pen and paper in a planner, old school style, like a normal human being, like I used to prior to 2013. So, right, it's a little challenging because you know it takes a little bit more skill to have to like count the days in between this and that. But I don't, I don't know guys like I. I'm pretty committed, and so for me to not only delete clue but to like end my 12 plus year subscription Like that was pretty big. Another big one for me was the Reminders app.

Dara Boxer 7:50

I used to keep a running grocery list in the reminders app and when I would go shopping I would have at least one child. I mean, I rarely go to the grocery store with less than one child, so I would have a kid with me, maybe two, maybe three, maybe all four of them. Uh, my phone in my hand as I'm like checking off the grocery list I have like running on my phone. It was just a mess, it's really hard to do. And so I started to keep our running grocery list on a pad and a paper, like a normal human being, again from like 1995. I mean, I'm pretty sure that's what my mom did, right. And uh, as the week goes on and we've run out of things and I need to go grocery shopping, just rip off that one piece of paper with our list on it. Um, and it's been totally fine. In fact, I've actually been leaving my phone in the car when I go grocery shopping. All I bring is my child, my wallet, my keys and the list. And it's actually really nice, like to not get distracted while grocery shopping because, oh my gosh, I'm like I have the reminders app open and trying to like grab things, trying to like restrain children and like then a text comes through, or like it's just hard, you can't, I don't know. It just feels so simple. I am now leaving my phone in the car when I go on errands, especially grocery shopping. It's so good.

Camera Nostalgia and Photo Simplicity

Dara Boxer 9:08

Another thing is that I know a lot of people that just rely heavily on their phone as a camera, and so this was another game changer for me. I have had the same Sony Alpha camera that I got for my 28th birthday, so we're coming up on a decade and, yes, the photos are not great. I barely know how to work it. I keep it in auto mode and sometimes there's terrible lighting and someone sometimes has, you know, their eyes closed and it's okay. You know, there's something really nostalgic about that imperfection, and I don't know about you, but you remember disposal cameras where you got like what was it? Like? 24 shots and half of them came out terrible and like it was fine. It just like wasn't a big deal. Because, honestly, again, who needs 150 perfect pictures from a kid's birthday party, right, like? I just feel like one or two are enough.

Dara Boxer 10:01

In fact, my brother actually had a nostalgic moment. He was going through old family photos a couple of weeks ago and he texted me a photo that he took of like it was, you know, an actual photo from like 1999. It was like one of. It was like a birthday party of mine and my mom had taken it on a disposable camera and it was a really cute shot. It was just one, I didn't see another, you know 75. It's just like a printed shot of me in a swimming pool and it was like cute and adorable and like I don't know. It was just like kind of charming and she's really lucky that, again, like you can't edit the photo. Like right, iphone has this like really incredible feature where you can edit the live photo, so if you caught somebody mid blink, you can edit that to change it. But there was something like really cool about like not having the ability to do that and like when a shot came out nice and great and like no one was blinking, like what a gift, right, and so that's kind of how I'm viewing it. I actually did this for my baby's first birthday back in August.

Dara Boxer 11:03

I used my camera camera instead of my cell phone to snap photos of her eating her little smash cake that I made her. And you know what? Most of them came out pretty bad, because, again, I have no idea what I'm doing. It's not the camera's fault, it's my fault but at the same time, like there was one really cute one and like it's a little dark, but like I don't know who cares, right, like who cares, so I don't know there's.

Dara Boxer 11:18

There's that, and I will say um, back to the gray scale feature of your phone. Um, so you are able to make a quick setting, cause it really is, for me it's really challenging to like look through photos and select a good one to send to my mom or some friends. Um, so I have the ability to quickly hit the home screen button, like three times, and that turns the color back on, and so then I'll select the photos that I want or to keep, to delete, to whatever Cause. You guys also know that every month or so, I go through my camera roll and do, like you know, like a hardcore um, you know erasing and deleting, so it's not like cluttered up with just like photos that I don't want or use anyway, and then, when I'm done with that task, I will, like you know, click the home button three times and then grayscale will get turned back on, which is awesome. Um, I was too stupid to learn how to do that myself. So ask chat GPT to kind of like walk you through that so you can have a quick shortcut to turn grayscale on and then off. Okay, so moving on to, um, yeah, just like I don't know.

Dara Boxer 12:18

Oh, and a lot of people will constantly ask me and they'll be like, well, what about like emergencies? Right, like you know, if you don't carry your phone with you here or there and I again I had to I had to retrain myself to really think about that, because what if there's an emergency? But, again, like, the other part of me is like, well, has there ever been an emergency? And if there was an emergency, wouldn't, like 90% of the people around me have a phone to call for emergency services if needed? And like, what are the chances that the emergencies for, like me or my children, as opposed to like someone else, you, what I mean, like I don't know.

Phone-Free Shopping and Emergency Myths

Dara Boxer 12:54

I just feel like there's something really freeing about leaving your phone in the car when you run into stores. Um, I will say, for shopping apps such as Target, like I still love Target pickups, but you have to have the app to do a drive up, which is unfortunate. I do have a cheat for that and I don't feel great about it, but here it is. I didn't completely delete the target app for my phone, I just hit it off my homepage. So when I plug my car into my phone I'm sorry when I plug my phone into my car, I have the ability to go through apps on my screen, on my dashboard it's called, like Apple CarPlay, and so I can go ahead and do it from my car. So I can still access the app and it allows me to do a target drive up as opposed to a pickup.

Dara Boxer 13:48

As for returns, like for Amazon or Happy Returns or whatever it is, they always email you the QR code. You don't need your phone for it. So this past week I had two returns. I simply printed off the QR codes for these returns, left my phone in the car while I ran in with my piece of paper with my QR code and the item for returning Worked totally fine. I had already mentioned that I swapped my grocery list app with a pad of paper and it's just again like so much easier to not juggle kids, a cart and my phone at the same time. And so, yeah, I don't. I'm not totally ready to get rid of my phone, I just rely. I still use my phone to FaceTime grandparents and I do. I can still check emails on the go if I need to, but again, I'm, as the weeks are ticking by, it's less of a compulsion for me and I don't feel like I need to check my phone.

Dara Boxer 14:46

A part of me in especially the early weeks of this, like you know, huge, drastic change. I did feel like I was relying a little bit more on my computer because I can text and call from my computer. So it's kind of like well, am I just replacing my phone with my computer? But the nice thing about a Mac is that it allows you to look at screen time and your pickups for all connected devices. So I was able to see that if I added in my computer into my pickup total, it really wasn't that much Like I was maybe picking up my computer 10 times throughout the day and I didn't think that was like over the top. So I don't know, I feel like I'm pretty good about it. Um, and it's just made things a little bit easier.

Dara Boxer 15:29

Um, my phone has always slept in the kitchen. That's been a thing for about a decade now, and so it's nice to just kind of like keep the phone away in the kitchen. It lives there 12 hours a day, from like seven to seven, and it feels really good. And so now the only things left on my phone now are my calendar, text maps, phone podcasts and audio books. And the last thing I have to delete is an exercise app, and I don't know if I'm ready for that, just because, because, like, when I go to the gym and I do an upper and a lower body workout, I use the orange theory app to kind of like help guide me and it gives me like this really awesome um exercise. It's like different every time. I really like it.

Dara Boxer 16:18

So if I wanted to, I guess I could write it down and bring a piece of paper with me for, like what I'm doing, how many reps you know this is the set, but I just feel like I'm not quite there yet. So I am still using my phone when I go to the gym and, like I don't know, maybe I can get myself to wean off of that, but I just I feel like I've done so much at this point that I'm like not too concerned about it. So that is sort of where I'm at on my screen-free journey. It's not perfect, but it's still a really big shift and I am treating my phone mostly like a phone and it it's very freeing. I've also decided that when I'm home and in the house, my phone will live in one spot, like a house phone, right like there's no reason to carry it around from room to room.

Living With Boundaries and Looking Ahead

Dara Boxer 17:08

I have like little designated checks of like did I miss a phone call or did I miss a text message from a friend? I love sending my best friend audio messages throughout the day, so I'm not going to like sacrifice that just because of my you know whatever. So I still do have again those designated times to pick it up, to leave her a voice memo, but I can also do that for my computer. So that's really nice. And I use my computer again, like during nap time to check emails, maybe do some online shopping if the house needs something or whatever which, by the way, now that running list is being kept on a pad of paper on the refrigerator. So again I can just like rip off that little piece of paper, bring it with me to my laptop and just like do what I need to do, rather than like juggling my phone and the reminders app and doing it, you know in front of the kids, and I've made a really big effort to not be on my phone, even doing you know God knows what. Even if I was doing something productive for the house, like updating the calendar or adding groceries to my reminders app, I still don't want my kids to see me on my phone and I feel like that's something my husband and I are pretty strong about. And so, yeah, to just know that my phone lives in one spot in the kitchen by the coffee maker and it's there and I don't need to touch it or check it in front of my children, which sometimes is hard to do, especially when they're home for like long periods of time, or, you know, spring break, winter, like whatever. Right now, um, all four of my kids are home because it is the Jewish new year and so no one has had school for like going on five days now. But you know what, guys, I have not really used my phone in front of them and it feels really really good. So that is where I'm at and thank you for listening and I feel like I'm sort of close to trading it in for a day. I can't, I'm not quite there, but I don't know, maybe like in six months or a year, I be like, okay, it's time I'm ready for a dumb phone.

Dara Boxer 19:00

I actually met another mother in my older kids school a couple of weeks ago and I she pulled out her flip phone and I like like tackled her. I mean I like ran across the room and I was like, oh my gosh, like please tell me everything about this. She was just telling me the same thing that like I felt in my gut that like she was just felt herself addicted, was on her iPhone way too much. She did not like that. Her kids constantly wanted to grab it and play games and do whatever, and she just felt like it was time. So she traded it in for her flip phone and it has calls and text. She does, does have ways on it. Um, I don't, I didn't know how that was possible, because if there's no internet on it, but I I didn't like we didn't get into it quite yet and she has camera so she can take photos of she needs and that's kind of it, and she seems really happy with it. And so it was actually really refreshing to see like there are people out there who are like gravitating towards these flip phones. Like there are people out there who are like gravitating towards these flip phones.

Dara Boxer 19:58

So thank you guys for listening to my journey and if this is inspiring you at all, I want to hear about it. Um, oh, and the last thing I should mention is that from Friday night to Saturday night, my husband and I do a a phone Sabbath. I mean we do Sabbath, but, uh, the main intent, even if we don't do Sabbath perfectly, is that the phones and the computers are away for a full 25 hours yes, 25, because technically, shabbat is 25 hours. So that is also super helpful to just like get away from my phone and not use it or my computer for a full day. And yeah, so that's been great. Okay, this episode is starting to get long, so I'm going to call it from here. Thank you, guys, so much for tuning in, and I will catch you back here next week.