I remember when the average household had .5 TVs in the entire house. If you were lucky enough to have a boob tube, everyone would gather around it in the living room, adjust the foil antenna and watch the news or The Brady Bunch or some other riveting classic family show we all cherished! But now there’s a TV around every corner, or at least 3 TVs, as that is the average number per household these days! And with that TV boom coupled with the tablet boom and the Netflix boom, comes an abundance of movie watching in bed. And since food and TV watching go hand-in-hand, there’s an awful lot of dining in bed happening!
Now we’re not talking the occasional breakfast in bed. I read a study the other day that said something like 68% of us watching TV in bed, and 1/4 of us eat at least one full meal a week in bed! That’s a lot of snacking between the sheets!
Seems harmless, right? A midnight snack while you binge watch Downton Abbey? A quick dinner while you catch up on The Voice? A few crumbs here and a few crumbs there never hurt anyone, after all! Not so! Eating in your bed can lead to all sorts of gross issues, both seen and unseen!
The nastiest of the creepy crawlers that dine on your bedroom leftovers are ants, flies, and cockroaches. Gag! Both need very little food to sustain themselves, and your dinner droppings provide just the meal ticket they need to come crawling {and invite their hoards of icky friends!}. Even if you do your best to clean up after yourself, eating in bed directly correlates to a bug increase. And it’s one thing to see a cockroach run across your front porch, but thinking about them running around under the covers makes my skin crawl. Ick!
Do you eat in bed? Full meals or just snacking? Do you watch TV in bed but keep the food in the kitchen? Or do you firmly believe that bedrooms are for sleeping, not watching or eating?! Weigh in below!
Don’t let the bed bugs bite,
~Mavis
Cindy says
I never eat in bed, I’ve never had the interest to have a t v in my bedroom. I’m a reader so thats what I look forward to before I turn out the light.
Cheryl says
Me too! Although last night my small dog thought he should take up the entire bed and stick his toenails in my back. Seriously, why doesn’t he go sleep in the closet where he usually sleeps?
Christina says
We are super guilty of eating dinner in the bedroom about once a week. I live in a small house, less than 1100 feet. Since our oldest is married and lives in her own home, our 20 year old is a full time student who works part time and our 18 year old is a full time student and also works part time. The hubby and I find ourselves alone in the evenings. Since no one is usually home, I turned our living room into a dining room and use a day bed as part of the seating and a couch. I made it a no tv room so that when all gather there no one is staring at the idiot box. We do have TVs in our bedrooms. We will watch something and eat in there. We also have two chairs in our bedroom we can eat at, knit, read…… Sometimes we just use TV trays too.
LynnDinKY says
We eat in the living room or the dining room. Heaven help the person who would eat in my bedroom!!! That’s just a no-no for me. We have two TVs in the house, one is in the living room and the other is in my craft room. I don’t like TVs in the bedrooms. I have seen too many children become dependent on the TV for falling asleep. I also prefer to monitor what my children are watching. That is us. Every household is different.
Kate says
I don’t like watching tv in bed, reminds me of being sick when I was a kid! And other than a mug of hot tea, no food in the bedrooms! At least that’s the ideal… I’m sure our teenager us sneaking food into her room!
Tamara says
One TV in the house, in the living room. We moved the TV into the bedroom when I was bedridden the final two months of my last pregnancy, 33 years ago. The only eating in bed happens when someone is sick. We also do not eat in the living room except sometimes for appetizers or dessert. Somehow our children survived growing up without TVs in their rooms, no cell phones and one family computer. We ate supper, and often breakfast, together. We did have two vehicles, a car and a pickup, which they learned to share with their dad and me juggling around work, school, activities and errands.
Tisha says
For me it comes down to sounds and smells. I view the bedroom as a sanctuary and escape. Listening to somebody chewing chips or crackers goes against that idea. I am not fond of food smells that linger either, so I try to limit the warmed up food coming into the bedroom, too. The fact that I am lazy and do not want extra clean up in the bedroom just reinforces the idea. Food in the kids bedrooms is a very rare thing. It happens, but not often.
Jennifer says
Our bedroom is for sleeping, naps, reading the occasional book and nothing else – no food allowed.
Cindi says
No TV and no food in the bedroom for us.
Lolly says
No eating in bed! I hate crumbs! Also, in 20+ yrs, no tv in our bedrooms. We don’t have a tv, anyway, but watch netflix on our laptop or ipad, usually in the kitchen (eat in) or living room. We have taken it to our room a few times to watch something when the kids are watching something very kiddish in the other room, and we want to watch something adultish. But in five yrs we’ve prolly watched something in our room maybe 10 times.
Mary Ann says
We don’t normally sit and watch television, but we do have shows we like, so we save them for mealtime and eat on trays in the living room. The only eating in bed is if the hubby takes an apple upstairs before bed or if someone is sick. I would never allow food crumbs to actually STAY in the bed — gross!
TV time in the bedroom for me is turning it on while I use the bed (made) as my laundry folding table and about 15-30 minutes before bed to get me sleepy. Hubby will occasionally watch a sports game in the bedroom and will go up an hour or so early and watch before bed.
Way too many TV’s in this house — living room, bedroom, and garage, and two offices which both have computers where a lot of YouTube and Netflix happens. Self-employed, so we work out of those offices, too.
Carrie says
Only one tv and its in the living room. Absolutely no eating in bed except when sick and even then I choose to lay on the couch so I can watch tv. We have stopped eating on the couch a few months ago. I grew up eating at the table and everyone talking about their day. I missed that time to catch up on life with my family so now dinner at the table is mandatory. There were groans at first but just yesterday I caught my partner eating his dinner at the table alone (he got home late after I ate). On nights when there are no activities after dinner we linger after eating to finish our conversations. It has really helped our communication and has been invaluable. Who would have thought?
We had dinner at my “in-laws” (we aren’t legally married) on Sunday and they have a beautiful dining room and it was set up with fall place settings. We still ate on tv trays in front of the news. I have sat at their table once in the 12 years we’ve been together and it was right after they bought it. The plastic is still on the cushions…. 🙁 This makes me so sad. I’m sad to miss out on shared conversations and stories. I’m sad to listen to the news that is always unpleasant.
Linda Sand says
We once bought a motorhome that had 4 TVs. For 2 people! We only ever watched one of them, though, and now that we are no longer traveling we only own one TV. It’s in the living room and it’s BIG! We don’t watch live TV unless it’s for a storm heading at us but we stream or play discs most nights–some of which were your recommendations.
Mary3 says
I am glad to see that i am not alone. We have 1 tv in the living room. No eating except in the kitchen or living room (on tray tables). No tv in the bedroom. I just bought a small (12 inch diagonal for the porch where I needlepoint) just for dvd’s. No cable hookup at all. When we had cable installed the cable guy didn’t believe we only had one tv and I only wanted cable in the living room. So glad to see that others think the same!
Ramona says
Confession, we have 7 t.v’s used to have more. Please don’t judge. My husband likes his baseball games and news. He can go in most any room and watch. 2 tv’s are in the living room. He watches sports on one and listens with an ear piece. I can watch something else on the other t.v. Mavis if I ever cancel our t.v. service like you did that would be the last straw. On the other subject, never eat in the bedroom always at the dining room table, yes there is a t.v. in there. Maybe time for an intervention!!
Deb says
Only one TV at my house and it is in the family room. The living room is where we sit and talk….like actual conversations and stuff. We also read and do puzzles and projects in that room.
NO eating in bed ever!!!! If someone is home sick and wants to watch TV they lie on the family room couch. Dinner is at the table together if schedules allow.
NCJill says
To answer a different question, I still use washcloths! I have about 20 white ones that I rotate and bleach so I can use a new one each night. Yay for washcloths!
Gloria says
No washcloth, just hands and a bar of castile soap for face washing.
1 tv in the living room. No eating there except weekly pizza and movie night. Beds are for sleeping and canoodling. ; )
Gale says
Yes, it’s that time of year for pumpkin and butternut squash-o-rama. Coffee, desserts, beer, yogurt, casseroles, soap. You name it.
Pam Kaufman says
I don’t watch much t.v. anyway (rather read a book) and have never ate anything in bed. I think it is gross for all the possibilities you mentioned. I cannot stand sleeping on wrinkled sheets let alone food crumbs! Yuck!
Diane says
One TV in the family room In almost 38 years together, we’ve only had more than one TV briefly, and that was a tiny portable that was set up in front of our in-home treadmill for a while. No cable, ever. And no one eats in bed unless they’re (really) sick or recuperating from surgery. Our bedroom is a sanctuary from the noise and bustle of the day, and we want it to stay that way.
KAYTHEGARDENER says
My vice is eating in my computer room, where I watch the occasional tv show or webinar. But I don’t have cable or a TV in the main room — the sofa & bed are for reading!!
Jenny Young says
I almost never eat in bed. I am a super cream puff when it comes to sleep…I want everything arranged just so & any crumbs at all would drive me batty. I can’t go to sleep if there are wrinkles in the sheets or the bed isn’t at least straightened. So, my husband calls me the princess pea.
HeatherS says
I, too, am the princess and the pea in our house! Crumbs in the bed, covers not just right, too much light, noise or the wrong temperature and no way will I be sleeping!
HeatherS says
Only one TV in our house and that is in the living room. And no eating in bed here. Really no food on the 2nd floor. I have caught the kids with candy upstairs, but that isn’t allowed either. I hate the thought of attracting bugs to the bedrooms. Hubby used to eat chips in bed when we met. I put a stop to that, chip crumbs in the bed – noooo!
Sandra says
We use wash cloths. We have two TV’s and a home theater system, but no TV’s in the bedroom. We never eat in bed either. Bed is for relaxing, sleeping, playing, napping, and reading.
Lissa says
I use washcloths. We have no tv nor do we use our computers for tv. My daughter uses the ipad for pbs kids for 30 min a day and we occasionally watch a kid friendly dvd like Mary Poppins or Sound of Music on my laptop. I listen to NPR on the radio (yes, a radio!) while I do mindless tasks around the house. We actually talk to each other while we eat! I didn’t realize I was so old fashioned until I started writing this. No wonder I love your blog.