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If you’ve been living life with an underlying feeling that maybe you spend too much time on your phone, whether it be scrolling, social media, or managing an online business, you are not the only one. In this post I will show you what a week off grid without constant scrolling, notifications and overstimulation taught me about my health and how it inspired change in my daily life at home. I’ll show you how I realized my phone addiction was worse than what I thought, what inspired me to change my phone habits, and now how I manage my online business without the apps.
In this post…
What I Realized When I Went “Unplugged”
I didn’t realize how bad my phone addiction had gotten until I left it all behind.
I mean, I had an idea… but until I was forced to quit cold turkey, I didn’t realize how much of a constant being “plugged in” was.
I grew up camping. And in the 90’s and 2000’s, “unplugging” wasn’t as drastic of a concept. It was just fun. But as I got older and social media and texting became more and more normal, and life kept moving faster and faster, the opportunity and the desire to go off grid all but disappeared.
Every day at home, my phone was glued to my hand. I told myself I was “staying informed” or “running my business,” but the truth? I was addicted. Addicted to scrolling, to searching, to falling down rabbit holes on ChatGPT, Google, and Pinterest. Addicted to the endless stream of news stories and politics that left me anxious, angry, and hopeless. Addicted to optimizing my blog and online business on the go.
Every scroll left me emptier, every headline made my chest tighter, every hour stolen felt like I was slipping further away from my real life.
And then, we went camping.
What Happened In A Week In Nature: No Phones, No Service
Some of my best memories from childhood come from camping and being outdoors… bike riding, exploring, campfires… and recently, the itch to give my own kids those experiences has grown stronger. So my husband and I decided to go camping.
So we packed up our family (and of course I obsessed about lists and gear for weeks, but that’s something to unpack in another blog post…) and drove up north to a cabin an hour away from cell reception.
And for the first time in years, I had no cell service, no wifi, and no constant stream of stimulation. It was just us — the lake, the trees, and silence (and some bats 😅).
I expected to feel restless, maybe even panicked without my phone. Instead, something beautiful happened. My anxiety softened. My hyperfixations quieted. My open loops had nowhere to go.
The stubborn eczema that had developed on my face cleared. I laughed more. My brain felt calmer than it had in ages.
I noticed something else too. At home, when a thought pops into my head and a loop opens, I can feel the gears start turning. Normally, that’s when I reach for ChatGPT, Google, or Pinterest. One little idea can send me spiralling down a rabbit hole for hours (sometimes days) until I’ve squeezed every drop of dopamine out of the obsession.
But without my phone, I couldn’t feed it. I was forced to just… sit there with my thoughts and ideas. And guess what? They faded away. I didn’t get sucked in. For the first time, I realized that not every thought needs to be chased, not every idea deserves hours of research. Some things are better left to drift away.
And perhaps best of all… my boys got me. All of me. Not the version of me sitting on the couch, scrolling, snapping at them to “go play.” They got a mom who was present. A mom who was in the water, exploring, laughing, and looking them in the eye instead of at a glowing screen. The change in them was as real as the change in me.
What I Learned About Overstimulation
Here’s the truth: what I thought was “phone addiction” was actually a cycle of overstimulation and crashing.
Every notification, every new article, every scroll, every project ticked off the do to list is a quick novelty hit to your brain. But that feeling is fleeting, and the crash feels like withdrawal: restlessness, irritability, and overwhelm. So you reach for the phone again. And the cycle spins faster and faster until you’re living in constant anxiety, always chasing relief but never finding it.
That week off-grid broke the cycle and interrupted the pattern. No scrolling. No notifications. No headlines. My mind and nervous system finally had space to breathe.
How I’m Bringing That Peace Home
I know I couldn’t go back to life as usual. Going unplugged made me long for something simpler… and I didn’t want to lose that. So here’s what I committed to changing:
- Deleting apps from my phone so I can’t doom scroll “just for a minute”
- Airplane mode resets: at night, and often during the day, because just setting my phone down isn’t enough
- Apps like WhatsApp instead of logging into social media to check DMs (or just regular texting and phone calls)
- Old school living: paperback books instead of endless browsing, downloaded music instead of streaming, DVD’s and VHS’s instead of searching for the “perfect” show to binge
- Unplugging before bed and not turning my phone back on until later the next day.
It feels like going back 15 years, but in the best way… back to when life was slower, quieter, and more present.
Managing An Online Business While Living Offline
I longed to delete social media from my phone, but I still worried about how I would run my business without it. It is still very important to me, but I just knew that if I kept trying to manage my social media and just “exercise more self control” I would end up in the same situation… doom scrolling, playing the comparison game, reaching for my phone 200 times a day.
So, after some thought, I still plan to run my business, but differently now.
- Work intentionally from my laptop, not glued to my phone
- Use WhatsApp for real conversations instead of Instagram DMs
- Schedule content through programs like Jetpack and Tailwind that drive traffic to my blog
If you have a blog and want to manage it more intentionally, read this blog post here about how Jetpack became the scheduling and management tool that changed my whole experience.
My business still grows, but it no longer hijacks my peace. Which means everything to me.
Why Living Unplugged Matters for Moms Like Us
If what I wrote in this post sounds familiar, then you know the dopamine trap of scrolling can be devastating. It steals us from our kids, our homes, and our peace of mind. It convinces us we’re connected when we’re actually more disconnected than ever.
I don’t want to live in that fog anymore. I don’t want my boys to remember me with a phone in my hand and half my attention elsewhere. I want them to remember me laughing, exploring, and being there… really there.
Unplugging showed me what’s possible. And now, I’m choosing to build a life that feels like unplugging — even when I’m at home.
If you need more tools to manage life without your phone without going entirely off grid and for more on intentional living at home, you’ll really like these blog posts here:
- 5 Ways For Moms to Stay Off Social Media (And Improve Mental Health)
- 31 Screen Free Activities for Kids That Give Moms a Mental Break
Are you going to try any of the tips I shared? Do you already? Or do you have other tips to share? We’d love to hear them — comment below!
