When was the last time you spent some quality time with your family? Did you have to think about it? I can admit that I certainly did. So when was the last time my entire crew was together? Perhaps it was dinner on Sunday night. Oh wait, we all took the dog for a walk on Monday afternoon, maybe that was it. My sister came over with her little people a few days ago… but my youngest was at dance. The truth is, not only can I not exactly remember the last time we were all together, but after I do the math, I realize this family of mine hasn’t been spending very much time together at all.
Do you ever feel like you’re being pulled in a 100 different directions, like there aren’t enough hours in the day? It turns out, on average, Canadian families spend only 14% of their time together doing all kinds of activities. The people at Leon’s, they wanted to know more. So they created an intriguing social experiment. An experiment designed to track family time spent together.
Meet the Ahluwalia Family
It’s been said that in the family home, the living room is a central location for gathering and spending quality family time together. So Leon’s created Project Smart Furniture as an experiment to make this family more aware of the time they spent together, so they could make the most of it. They put a centralized “family-time hotspot” in a couch to track family time since this was an integral part of this family’s living space. How cool is that!
They then tracked the families movements and created this video.
Warning; it will make you think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTx_LunGNGU
It should be noted that the time tracked for this commercial was based on time spent near the living room and does not account for total time spent together outside of the centralized space. But the message is clear. We all need to be tracking, cherishing, making time for what is most important to us. Our family. And with effort, and small changes in our lifestyle, wonderful things can happen. We can be rewarded with more quality time with the one’s we love most.
To see all of the results from this unique experiment be sure to visit Project Smart Furniture and talk about the results with your family!
This video was a bit of a wake-up call for me. One of my favourite sayings has always been, “We only get 18 summers with our kids“. I’m the Mother of two teen girls and one of those girls will be headed off to University this fall. THIS fall. Suddenly, this saying of mine, it’s hitting home rather hard. I thought I was making the most of my summers, my time. But now? A new thought; I’m fantastic at making the most of those 2 summer months, but have I been doing my best with the other 10? Suddenly I’m feeling the crunch, the pressure, the need to make the most of family time in every way possible. I don’t want to miss a moment with my girls. How will I make a change? A change that will result in more quality time with my family.
Project Smart Furniture has made me realize if I can schedule time to work. Create space on the calendar for conference calls. Squeeze in coffee dates and lunches with girlfriends. Even make sure the laundry gets done. Then I can certainly schedule more family time. It’s time to not just think about putting the family first, but to put that thought into action. It’s time to officially put family movie night on the calendar. Have a date night with my kids. Bring back game night…even if that means playing games that are a little out of my comfort zone or adding a bunch of extra teenagers to the mix. I don’t want my full story to be “Mom was too busy, the house was always clean and the laundry was done”. I want our story to be time well spent…together. Having fun. Learning and laughing, having adventures and making memories.
The balance of work, life family can be achieved, family can and should always came first. Perhaps it’s time to create my own social experiment. Off to re-work that calendar. Thanks Project Smart Furniture!
To find out more about Project Smart Furniture be sure to check out their site, and as always you can find out about everything that’s new at Leons Furniture on Facebook and Twitter.
Disclosure: This was a sponsored post but as always all thoughts and opinions expressed on this blog remain my own.
It’s always nice to spend time together, very important, for me it is so difficult because we live far apart.
My family has all passed away. Trust me – those hours are precious. Make the time – in the end love is all that we carry with us.
I come from a very close family and have my Mom(91) sister and 2 brothers who live close by and we get together for dinners and game night quite often,nothing better than family time!
This would be really interesting to have in my home. My hubby and I both have FitBit trackers so we are totally into trackers. This is something to think about for us.
very interesting video. makes you take a step back and think about how much time you are really spending with loved ones
As my kids have grown older, I realize just how important every single moment we share has been. Now I am concentrating on grandchildren and loving it!!
Love family time the furniture is great
The Smart Furniture Project is awesome! We love spending time as a family!
As my daughter gets older, she goes out with friends more often for sleepovers etc. and the house is getting lonelier! It’s dawning on me we only have a few more summers.. and it’s so sad. We do spend a lot of time together otherwise. I cherish the time we have & will need to put in as much family-time effort as possible to make these years count!
The 18 years together with the kids are gone and now my husband and I have our couch time together.
This is such an interesting feature and it’s hard to believe how fast time flies.We as a family try hard to stick together and do lots of things indoors and out because our kids have always loved and participated in a variety of clubs and sports.We all try to attend all these various things together and enjoy them very much. 🙂
It’s a real eye opener to find out that average family spend 14% of time together. Kudos to your family to increasing that number to 37%. Such a great way to track family time to make you more aware
Yes, time goes too fast. Enjoy family time every day !
Interesting article and love the smart furniture – something of the future. And as with the video, there are so many distractions these days that take a family in all different kind of directions.
This is so important to be aware of, this is very coll