Slow Evenings: DVDs, Comfort Movies and Reclaiming Our Time

For the record, future Mr. Trip Side and I are tech people. His world is deeply embedded in code and mine has always been in marketing. I learned HTML at a young age and have always been genuinely excited by technology. We love our devices. We’re always testing something new to see if it improves our lives.

But lately we’ve been going a bit backwards and it’s been one of the best things we’ve done.

With streaming costs going up and the general feeling that there’s somehow nothing to watch despite having access to everything, we’ve quietly migrated back to physical media. We love owning a copy. We genuinely enjoy the intentional act of getting up to swap a disc.

It feels deliberate in a way that streaming just… doesn’t.

We’ve also noticed we are significantly less likely to stay up past our bedtime when the credits roll and there’s no button to push for the next episode. Streaming is designed to keep you in. Physical media lets you out.

I know this might sound a little ridiculous but I genuinely miss commercials sometimes. I miss the natural interruptions that gave you a reason to get up, do something, come back. I miss the VHS rewinder. I miss the ritual of it.

Our setup is intentional too. We don’t have a television in our bedroom. In the living room we have an Xbox we use as our blu-ray player and a projector instead of a TV, which makes movie nights feel like actual events rather than background noise. The only TV in the house is mine from my old place and it lives in the guest room for visitors or the rare occasion when one of us wants to watch YouTube while the other plays video games. So far that hasn’t even happened.

We save movie nights for Friday or Saturday when we don’t have a date night planned. We rarely binge anything. Ad is on a mission to get me through all of the John Wick and Terminator movies and I am on a mission to get him through the entire West Wing series. 😅 Very different tastes but I actually enjoyed the first John Wick and since it’s the only one I’ve seen, it is obviously the best one!

Beyond movies, I’ve been filling our slower evenings with things that actually feel good. Reading physical books. Looking into watercolor classes for the summer. Making jam. Dehydrating apples. Learning French, very slowly and very imperfectly. Planning our camping trip. Selling duplicate appliances on Facebook Marketplace. None of it is glamorous but all of it feels intentional and that’s exactly the point.

Reclaiming your evenings is such a small act and yet it changes everything.

My Favorite Cottagecore Comfort Films

And now the part you’ve been waiting for. These are my go-to comfort films, the ones I return to again and again and will absolutely be leaning into now that the house is finally in working order and we have a little more time to breathe.