Returning To A 90s Household

The most radical thing you can do in today's home isn't buying the newest device. It's refusing to.

Returning to a '90s household is about noticing how much ownership we've handed over to streaming services, smart devices, and cloud servers without realizing it.

As a first-time homesteader, I've spent years learning to stop depending on grocery stores. Lately, I've been applying that same thinking to the technology inside my home, and it started with one small decision: bringing an old CRT television into the house.

The response I got online told me thousands of people are hungry for the same thing. Vinyl records, film cameras, DVDs, camcorders, and libraries are all having a moment right now, and it isn't because everyone suddenly became sentimental.

Convenience is not free. Streaming replaced ownership. Smartphones replaced dedicated cameras and brought constant distraction. Cloud storage replaced photo albums that your grandchildren could hold in their hands.

If we can pass down canning jars and gardening knowledge, we can pass down movies, music, and photographs, too.

You’ll Learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[3:15] The thousands of unexpected responses online after I brought a CRT television home

[5:06] The Game of Thrones conspiracy and why modern TV feels designed to discombobulate you

[7:53] Curating a physical movie collection and the Disney films that won't make the shelf

[10:48] Why an iPod that only plays music feels more freeing than a smartphone

[13:24] Convenience is not free, the hidden trade-off behind every modern upgrade

[15:02] Applying homesteader resilience to technology, not just the pantry

[18:54] The shift toward vinyl, film cameras, and permanence in a temporary world

Hello, and welcome back to the Gubba Homestead Podcast. I'm Gubba, a first-time homesteader following in the footsteps of my homesteading forebears. I discuss everything from homesteading to prepping and everything in between. If you haven't subscribed yet, make sure to sub so you never miss out on a new episode.

Today we're talking about something that has been quietly changing in my own home over the past few months: why I'm intentionally disconnecting from modern technology and returning to what I call a 90s household.

Before we get into that, I want to thank the sponsor of today's podcast, which is my small skincare business, Arvoti. It all started with one tallow balm I made for my dad while he was struggling with eczema, and today I have the privilege of helping thousands of people simplify their skincare with traditional ingredients. If you're looking to upgrade your skincare routine, you can check out my small-batch tallow balms, facial cleansers, botanical serums, and handcrafted goat milk soaps.

I don't know if you feel like this, you can let me know if you do, but there is something that feels incredibly peaceful about walking into a home that isn't constantly trying to get your attention. A home where the television isn't asking you to download an update before you can watch a movie.

Where the music you love belongs to you instead of living behind a monthly subscription. Where family photographs are tucked inside albums on a bookshelf instead of buried somewhere inside a cloud server.

Where technology quietly does its job and then gets out of the way. The more I've thought about it, the more I've realized that what I'm searching for isn't nostalgia. It isn't about pretending we're living int he 90s again. It's about reclaiming something we've slowly surrendered over the past twenty-five years without even realizing it.

This all started with one decision that seemed incredibly small. I brought an old CRT television into my home. I mainly got it for when family comes to visit, the kids can experience TV without the flashy colors and weird modern addictive animation.

I shared a video about it online and the response surprised me. Thousands of people immediately understood exactly why I had done it. They weren't excited because the picture quality was somehow better. They weren't interested because old televisions are fashionable again.

They understood because they are craving the same thing I was. They are tired of living in homes where nearly every device seems designed to compete for their attention instead of serving a simple purpose.

That old television reminded me of something I had forgotten. Technology used to feel complete. You bought something once, brought it home, plugged it in, and it simply worked. You didn't need an account. You didn't need Wi-Fi. You didn't need to accept terms and conditions.

Nobody asked to collect information about how often you used it. Nobody interrupted your movie with advertisements on the home screen before you'd even selected what to watch. You slid in a VHS tape or a DVD, pressed play, and the television faded into the background while your family enjoyed the movie together.

The more I sat in front of that television, the more I realized it wasn't really the television that I missed. It was ownership. Physically owning something.

That word has quietly disappeared from modern life. We think we own far more than we actually do. Most of us stream our music, stream our movies, rent our software through subscriptions, store our memories on someone else's servers, and trust companies we've never met to preserve the things that matter most to us.

We pay month after month for access rather than ownership, and because the transition happened so gradually, most of us never stopped to question it.

Think about movies for a moment. When I buy a VHS tape or a DVD, it belongs to me. Nobody can remove it because of a licensing disagreement. Nobody can suddenly decide it isn't available in my country anymore. Nobody can increase the monthly subscription price before allowing me to watch it.

If my internet goes out tomorrow, every movie on my shelf still works exactly as it did yesterday. That sense of permanence is becoming surprisingly rare in a world where so much of what we consume only exists as long as someone else allows us to access it. Agenda 2030 anyone?

Man oh man do I wish I would have kept all of my VHS and DVDs from when I was younger. We had shelves. But now I get to curate my collection to only things my family or I will watch. I collect older movies from Pawn shops or online. Recently, I got some Scooby Doos and Mary Kate and Ashley and Sound of Music. I'm careful..propaganda...

The same thing happened with music. I grew up when buying a CD was an event. You saved your money, picked out an album, opened the plastic wrapping, flipped through the booklet, memorized the lyrics, and listened to the songs in the order the artist intended. You didn't skip around after fifteen seconds because another million songs were sitting one swipe away.
You actually lived with an album. It became attached to memories. Today we have access to virtually every song ever recorded, yet somehow music often feels more disposable than it ever has before.

I actually hardly listen to music anymore and if I do its personal nostalgic music to me like what I'm talking about here. Songs that have memories mainly.

Lately I've been looking at my old iPods again, and I know that sounds funny when smartphones can already play music, but that's exactly why an iPod appeals to me. It only plays music. It isn't constantly lighting up with notifications. It isn't interrupting an album because someone texted me. It isn't pulling me toward social media after every song.

It doesn't know my location. It doesn't care how long I listened. It simply plays the music I intentionally chose to put on it. There's something incredibly freeing about using a tool that performs one job exceptionally well instead of trying to become the center of your entire life. I also have an older car that has a CD insert that I will still listen to the old CDs I kept in there.

Photography is another area where I think we've quietly lost something valuable. We all carry incredible cameras in our pockets, yet somehow we've stopped creating physical memories. Most of the pictures we take never leave our phones. They're buried beneath screenshots, receipts, shopping lists, and thousands of images we'll probably never scroll back through. I think about my grandparents' house and the shelves lined with photo albums.

You could sit together on the couch for hours turning pages, laughing at old family vacations, remembering birthdays, and introducing children to relatives they'd never met. Those photographs became family heirlooms because they physically existed. idk about you but...

Today, so many of our memories exist inside devices that become obsolete every few years. They're stored on hard drives, cloud accounts, or phones that eventually stop receiving updates. We trust that those companies will always exist and that we'll always remember our passwords, but history tells us that technology changes incredibly fast.

A printed photograph doesn't need electricity. It doesn't need a software update. It doesn't require a subscription. It simply exists, waiting for the next generation to discover it.

One of the biggest realizations I've had throughout this process is that convenience isn't free. We often talk about convenience as though it's simply a bonus, but every convenience comes with a tradeoff. Streaming is more convenient than DVDs, but you lose ownership.

Smartphones are more convenient than dedicated cameras, but you gain constant distraction. Cloud storage is more convenient than photo albums, but your memories become dependent on someone else's servers. Smart televisions are more convenient than older televisions, but many collect viewing information, display advertisements, and require internet connections for features that used to work without one. Convenience almost always asks for something in return.

The difficult part is that these tradeoffs rarely happen all at once. They happen one small step at a time. One subscription doesn't seem like a big deal. One smart appliance doesn't seem concerning. One account here, another password there, another monthly payment somewhere else.

Then one day you wake up and realize nearly everything inside your home depends on the internet, software updates, or ongoing payments just to function the way it did when you bought it.

As a homesteader, this has made me think about resilience in a completely different way. We spend so much time learning how to preserve food because we don't want to rely entirely on grocery stores. We learn to garden because producing even a portion of our own food creates independence.

We can vegetables because we understand that having something physically sitting on a pantry shelf is different than hoping it will always be available later. Why shouldn't that same mindset extend into other areas of our lives? Why shouldn't we value owning our movies, our music, our books, and our family photographs just as much as we value stocking our pantry?
I've also noticed something else since bringing older technology back into my home. My attention feels different. When I sit down to watch a movie, I watch the movie. I don't spend twenty minutes scrolling through endless recommendations trying to decide what deserves my attention.

There isn't an algorithm suggesting ten other things I should watch instead. There aren't autoplay trailers competing for my focus. The experience begins when I put the tape into the television and ends when the credits roll. It's remarkably simple, and that simplicity has become surprisingly rare.

I think that's one of the biggest things we've lost. We've become so accustomed to technology demanding our attention that we barely notice it anymore. Every notification interrupts our thoughts. Every recommendation asks us to consume something else.

Every advertisement competes for a few more seconds of our focus. Modern technology isn't just designed to perform tasks anymore. Much of it is designed to keep us engaged for as long as possible because our attention has become one of the most valuable commodities in the world.

This doesn't mean I believe every piece of modern technology is bad. Obviously I use the internet. I record podcasts using modern equipment. I'm grateful for the ability to share ideas with people all over the world. There are incredible advancements that have genuinely improved our lives.

But I also think we've reached a point where we should be asking harder questions about whether every new piece of technology actually makes our lives better or whether it simply makes us more dependent.

For me, returning to a 90s household isn't about rejecting progress. It's about becoming intentional. It's about asking whether I actually need every device to be connected to the internet. It's about deciding that maybe my television doesn't need to know what I'm watching.

Maybe my music player doesn't need to recommend new songs every hour. Maybe my camera doesn't need social media built into it. Maybe my memories deserve to exist somewhere that doesn't require a password to access.

I think we're beginning to see a quiet shift happening. Vinyl records are making a comeback. Film cameras are becoming popular again. Young people are buying camcorders, CDs, DVDs, and old digital cameras. Libraries are busier than many people expected. People are rediscovering handwritten letters, printed books, and physical collections.

I don't think this movement is happening because everyone suddenly became nostalgic. I think it's happening because people are hungry for permanence in a world that increasingly feels temporary.

As homesteaders, we often talk about returning to older ways of growing food, preserving harvests, and building skills that our grandparents considered ordinary. Maybe it's time we begin thinking about technology the same way.

Not because everything old is automatically better, but because some of those older tools respected our time, our privacy, and our ownership in ways that many modern devices simply don't.

So no, I don't think everyone needs to throw away their smartphone tomorrow. I don't think the answer is abandoning every piece of modern technology. I think the answer is becoming intentional enough to decide where modern technology genuinely improves your life and where older technology might actually serve you better.

Maybe that means buying an old television. Maybe it means carrying an iPod instead of opening another app. Maybe it means printing family photographs this weekend. Maybe it means building a bookshelf filled with movies, music, and books that truly belong to you.

Because at the end of the day, a homestead has always been about creating a home that serves the people living inside it instead of depending entirely on systems outside of it. I think that philosophy applies just as much to our technology as it does to our gardens. And perhaps one of the most radical things we can do in today's world isn't buying the newest device on the market.

Perhaps it's choosing technology that quietly does its job, lets us own what we purchase, protects a little more of our privacy, and then gets out of the way so we can get back to living our lives.