Earlier this month Husband and I did something I never thought we’d do: we ditched our landline phone and moved exclusively to cell phones.
Our decision was prompted in large part by the fact that we live in a swing state and, for the past several months, our home phone line was being besieged by robocalls sharing the latest scandal about a Senate candidate, campaign workers calling to ask for money, and pollsters interested in our position on everything from Romney’s tax plan to the Obama administration’s handling of the terrorist attack in Benghazi. Between the election-related calls and the usual slate of telemarketers and wrong numbers, the ratio of calls we wanted to calls we didn’t was, literally, about 1 to 20.
The campaign season cemented a decision we’d been creeping toward for awhile now, slow as ever to follow the tide when it comes to adapting new approaches to technology. And so it was with a happy heart and the promise of a heavier wallet that I called our phone provider to cut our ties.
This was a big move for Husband who is, in many ways, a modern-day Luddite: sure, he uses a laptop every day for work and he loves the DVRÂ as much as I do, but he doesn’t text, he doesn’t tweet, he’s not on Facebook, and, until a few weeks ago, no one had his cellphone number except for me – and I only used it for emergencies and when he was out of town. So he’s not only adjusting to not having a home phone, but also to using a cellphone at all.
For me, it’s been both a practical change and a surprisingly emotional one. I’m realizing the benefits and drawbacks of having our family’s primary phone be in my pocket all the time, whether I’m at home hanging out with the kids or looking for solitude while out on a run. I’ve also been thinking about the change that this represents not just for our family, but also for a generation of kids who won’t ever remember dialing a phone that’s attached to a cord. Packing up our kitchen phone and answering machine conjured up memories of the white, wall-mounted dial phone in my parents’ kitchen that was attached to my ear for much of 1990 and 1991, and the beige touch tone phone that lived in our spare room. When I was in high school I bought an extra-long cord for it so that I could drag it across the hall to the privacy and comfort of my bedroom.
It seems quaint now, the idea of a whole family sharing one phone number, a sister nagging her brother to get off the phone so she can use it. But I’m not sure it’s all bad – having everyone just a bit more in each other’s business, giving kids an out from being constantly available. So I’m not getting rid of our old phone. I’m going to hang on to it until my kids are old enough to make and receive their own calls, just in case I feel like letting the times go one way while we go another.
Are you still hanging on to your landline phone?
{ 39 comments… read them below or add one }
We still have our landline and I’m not really sure why – the telemarketer are OUT OF CONTROL (and we don’t even live in a swing state!). Insane. I never pick up. Maybe it’s time … the thing is when I’m at home I really prefer to talk on the landline. Hmm. Maybe I am a Luddite! :)
That was one of mine main hesitations for a long time. I just don’t think reception is as good on a cellphone as it is on a landline. But then I realized I don’t really like talking on the phone all that much and hardly ever do it – and, most of the time, my friends were calling me on my cellphone anyway. :)
I had one of those phones with the extra long cords, too!
We gave up our land line two years ago when we moved to Illinois. I don’t really miss it at all. The only drawback is that it meant we had to get our middle schooler a phone earlier than we wanted. He started staying home alone or with his little sister and we wanted him to have a way to contact us.
That’s what I was thinking, Shannon: when the kids get a little older, we’re going to need to revisit our strategy. Either go with the family cell plan or go back to the landline…if they even still exist in a few years! ;)
We got rid of our landline years ago, for the same reasons you cited here. Plus, neither of us are really “phone people,” so it just didn’t make sense, given how little time we spend on the phone. But I know that nostalgia you’re speaking of. When I was a teenager in the early 90s, I remember a cousin of mine, who was about 15 years older than me, marveling at our caller ID and thinking how sad it was that I’d never have the experience of wondering who was calling. I guess each generation feels the same, huh?
We have a land line, but I rarely answer it. Still. I’d rather talk on the land line. And in the hurricane zone, I like having more communication options.
That’s a good point, Kate. We’re in tornado land here and long-term power outages are not uncommon. During a long outage this summer, I just charged my phone in my car, but what if I didn’t have enough gas for that after awhile?
Hmm…now you’ve got me thinking.
We ditched it a while back too. Whenever it rang, we huffed and puffed in annoyance, and we very rarely checked the voicemail. Still, when I called Verizon to cancel, I was made aware that I wouldn’t save even a dollar, because it is bundled with our internet and TV. When I said to the customer service agent that we never used it, he answered “nobody does.” Nice…
Ahh, gotta love the practical cynicism of big business! ;)
We’ve still got our landline (though, sadly, no cord or rotary dial). Where we live, cell coverage is spotty, so for safety reasons, and because it’s just annoying to try to talk on the phone when you can’t hear the other person, we’re sticking with it. Our state has a “do not call” list, so we don’t get telemarketers, but the polling is getting on my nerves. However, several years ago, I was at a friend’s house and they just let the phone ring and the answering machine pick it up–to screen their calls. I felt so liberated by the idea that I do not HAVE to answer the phone, just because it’s ringing, that I’ve hardly answered it before the answering machine ever since.
I hear you. Caller ID gave us that sense of freedom and it lasted for a long time until I realized that, much more often than not, the person calling wasn’t anyone I wanted to hear from.
But if cell phone service wasn’t reliable here, there’s no way I would have made the switch. I don’t like the phone, but I like the idea of not having it in case of an emergency even less.
Hello from another Swing Stater! Our phone is going off like mad. At first it made me furious, but then I decided to start answering the phone just to “f%$#” with the person on the other end of the line. It has provided many hours of amusement and delight. Clearly, I am not a nice person.
I keep thinking about ditching the landline, but have not yet. My nine-year old does not have a cell phone (I hope to wait until she is around 12 or there is a need for it), and I would feel better knowing she has a phone to use. Not that she ever calls anyone, mind you!
The landline also gives me a peace of mind, in case we lose the cell phone or the battery goes dead. But that is not a very good reason either since our landline will go out after about eight hours without power.
I guess I don’t have any really compelling reasons…
Quaint or not, the single family phone conjures many memories – in film as well as Real Life. Good memories, most of them.
That said, I would happily cut my landline. (And the cost. It’s all telemarketers and robocalls as you say.) How did you manage while still retaining a decent cable / internet provider?
When we first moved here, we got Internet and phone through one provider and our cable through another. Then, once the DSL started having constant hiccups, we switched to cable Internet – so now our cable and Internet are through one company and we’ve cut ties to the other.
Yes, yes, yes! We have the landline. My kids are now grown and this has been our phone number for their whole lives. I know that is silly, but in a topsy turvy world I think I latch onto continuity where I can. It is probably time to look at what that little slice of permanency is costing per month, huh?!
I don’t know, May. I find your reasoning really lovely. My parents still have the same phone number that they always had when I was growing up and now you’ve got me wondering how I would feel if they changed it. (Can you tell I’m a latching-onto-continuity kind of girl too?) :)
Want to hear how sentimental I am about numbers? My step-father died almost 8 years ago now. He is the man who taught me about finances. I was the executor of his will. As such my name was on his bank account. I wasn’t able to close that account until just last month. Crazy.
But it’s an altared space for me. A bank account willed to me by the person who taught me to manage money. Never mind that there were no funds in it. Closing it and surrendering that series of numbers to the cosmos meant I was unattached to this dear person. See? even now, tears.
Of course you want to keep the phone line upon which your children called home to say, “The basketball game is over, can you come get me?” or “Can I stay late at Mike’s house?” That number meant you had a family and connections. I so get it. The cost is nothing compared to the grief it is forestalling! Well…. as I shed more tears, my daughter is away at college. I hear ya, friend.
We’ve toyed with the idea, but haven’t made the jump yet. My hubby is a bit of a Luddite as well; not on FB, Twitter, blogosphere etc. Only the most basic technology is embraced and it needs to be for a specific, practical function! Oi Vey. Fortunately, we have caller ID which pops up on our TV so we can screen the robocallers, pollsters and other annoying interruptions.
I’ve considered the option to ditch the landline phone but I’m not ready for it yet, for several reasons.
- We never, ever pick up that phone when it rings, because we use that phone number to filter calls. No way I want to give away my cell phone number or everyone and anyone to contact me. This is a good tool for that, but as we get less and less calls on it, it’s something to think about.
- Cell phone networks are unreliable. Every time we’ve had large wildfires, the cell phone towers have gone down or have been saturated and I wasn’t able to make or receive any calls. Not a good spot to be in when there’s an emergency. I’ve gone through two huge wildfires since I’ve lived in San Diego and we all know the next one is just around the corner.
- Finally I want my kids to have a phone available at any time to call 911. I have the cordless downstairs and the corded phone upstairs, which will work even if electricity is down. I hope they never, ever have to use it but it’s there just in case.
Eventually I’ll ditch the landline but for safety reasons, I’m not ready for it just yet.
You know, Milka, that’s a really good point about kids being able to call 911. If I can’t remember where my cell phone is half the time, how do I expect them to be able to find it, unlock it, and call for help?
I would at least leave the cell phones unlocked at all times for easy access.
Yes, we too gave up having a landline when we started our commuter marriage. It didn’t make sense for my husband and me to pay for two landlines in two different states when we’d be using our cell phones (which didn’t differentiate between local and long-distance calls) to talk to each other at night. When I moved back to Seattle after grad school, we just didn’t see any reason to start having the landline again. It’s worked fine — but with a baby on the way, now my husband has started talking about getting a landline when our kids are old enough to want phone time so that they don’t end up monopolizing our phones or begging for cell phones we’re not ready for them to have. We’ll see what happens … obviously that’s a long way off!
We still have a landline. We even have non-cordless phones, which are good to have in a power outage. I would not want my daughter, the only fourteen year old in the world to not have a cell phone, to be home alone without a telephone.
Your post really got me thinking! Because I can relate to every word of this…boy, do I remember those times yanking and trying to untangle the phone cord to drag into my room, telling my brother or mother to hang up already if I suspected they were trying to eavesdrop from the bedroom phone! I agree that the majority of our calls are telemarketers, and we’re constantly screening. I fear that the reason we’re holding on is because the landline is what we know and what we grew up with, and how lost would we be if left with these flimsy pocket phones that we can’t even understand 100%? I too had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the world of cell phones. Thanks for this Kristen, I just might make the leap after reading this!
Alright, after writing the above I read through everyone’s comments…there are some good arguments for and against. The beauty of blogging :-)
I live in earthquake land. I have retained my land line but if you call me on it I know you don’t know me.
I do still have a landline. I’m not ready to give it up quite yet. But like you, OMG if I get one more campaign call I’m going to scream! (we’re in a swing state too)
It’s funny; we never got one when we moved into our house … 12 years ago. Until recently, when we got an Ooma, which is some newfangled Internet phone thing that looks and acts like an actual (old-school) phone. I’m pretty sure my 2-year-old knows how to work it better than I do, but my husband thought it was a good idea to have for sitters and the elementary school and such. It’s kind of nice and no pollsters have the number, hallelujah.
I’ve never heard of an Ooma, but it sounds great. I’ll have to check it out.
By the way, I think the creators of Zumba and the manufacturers of the Roomba should team-up with the Ooma folks to make some sort of telephone-vacuum cleaner-salsa workout. Now that would be fun. :)
Sellabit Mum wrote about how hard it was to get rid of the landline because her daughter started getting calls on her (the mom’s) cell phone. So I guess that’s something I’ll have to worry about soon enough.
It is strange to think about it though, not having a fixed line with an attached cord. I remember when we first got our message recorder.
Ooh, I’ll have to check out her post. Thanks for the tip.
We haven’thad a landline for about six years, and if we ever do end up back in North America, I doubt that we’ll get one.
I think the state of living overseas where cellphone proliferation is so dense, and far fewer people have land lines sort of normalised this condition for us. Now, I wouldn’t even really consider having a land line.
It does mean, however, that my child’s idea of what it means to talk on the phone is kind of skewed. She regularly takes the phone to her toy of choice “shows” it to whomever she’s talking to. I think it’s because we use skype / facetime so much that this is normal for her.
PS, remember in like the 80′s or the 90′s when the idea of having a video phone was like so futuristic!!!?
I think about that a lot. I also think about how cool I thought “car phones” were in the 90s, even though they were as big as a shoe box!
Thanks for the reminder that landlines have never been the norm in most parts of the world. I am always fascinated to read about how cell phones have revolutionized communication in so many places.
I remember when some numbers had 6 digits.
We still have our land line. Our phone has a built-in voice mail that allows monitoring the message and picking up if you want to talk. I don’t think you can do that with a cell.
I hope you’ll do a follow-up post on how you’re adjusting.
In my entire marriage, we’ve never had a land line so I can’t comment on the advantages and disadvantages. But, due to work stuff, we’ll probably be getting one soon! I guess we’re going backwards. :)
We’ve lived without a landline before, but now that we have a home office, we have it around because we had terrible cell signal with the past two cell carriers and we had to make conference calls with our landline. I’m not married to the idea of having one, but we’ve not had any issues with telemarketers or election calls so we’ve not considered otherwise either.
It’s crazy that you get all these phone calls from the election.
WE ditched our landline too…it is very weird, but I like it!
We still have our landline. I am unclear why, but I guess it is one of those “just in case” backups.
{ 1 trackback }