How Noise Cancelling Headphones Make me a Better Parent

I relish in silence and alone time, yet the current reality of my life is I don’t get a lot of it.  I’m at work all day around people talking to me or me talking to them.  When I come home, I am surrounded by three rambunctious kids who for some reason do a lot of screaming and talking at really loud volumes.  These days my kids stay up way too late and it’s hard to get them to bed, and many nights I just give up and let them hang around as long as they are doing something mildly productive like cleaning up or reading or watching Survivor or The Amazing Race with me.  Also, sometimes my husband wants to talk to me.  Because of this routine I just don’t get a lot of time in silence or alone.

…Until I discovered Bose QuietComfort (a.ka. Noise Cancelling) headphones.  For a long time, I owned a pair of the wired version, but I only used them when I was traveling and on flights.  For some reason I never used them around the house or thought to use them outside of on planes while traveling.  About a year ago, I purchased the Bose QuietComfort 35 Wireless headphones and I use them almost daily.  It is one of the top 10 electronics in my life (I’ll post that list soon, I need to create it).  And it’s another item that’s pricey ($345), but well worth the investment and adds value to my life daily.  I don’t mind spending money on something that is a quality product, adds value, and I consistently use.

They come in silver, black, and rose gold.  I wish the rose gold was offered a year ago, and I would have gone for those!

What do I do while I am wearing my Bose headphones?

• Wash Dishes – We actually handwash the majority of our dishes and rarely use the dishwasher. I actually find some pleasure in washing dishes while listening to something, and things quickly air dry and are ready to use again, so we need fewer dishes.
• Tidying the house – Putting things away, light tidying
• Serious cleaning – Bathrooms, etc.
• Meditate (future post coming soon on this topic)
• Work – at home or at my office – Sometimes I bring them to work to get more focused quiet work done. I find when I have my headphones on, even when I am not playing anything, it creates this sort of extra heavy duty silence that makes me super productive.
• Work on Mostly Minimal Life
• Watch TV – We can connect our Bluetooth headphones to our Apple TV and watch/listen to TV while
• Watch YouTube – The only YouTube I watch is basically tiny house, decluttering, or minimalism videos
• *The one thing I don’t do it workout with them. I wear my apple air pods while I am running or working out. Mainly because I don’t want to sweat on the Bose headphones and they are too big/bulky for a workout situation. 

What am I listening to on my Bose headphones?

• A book
• A podcast
• Music
• A YouTube Video
• TV

So why do Bose QuietComfort headphones make me a better parent?

They dull the noise around me just enough that I can handle it all!  And they really create some sort of a magical sound force around me that allows me to really focus on what I am listening to in a way that regular headphones can’t do. They make me more productive and willing to do things that I otherwise am less interested in doing, like cleaning a bathroom or tidying up the house.  They allow me to let my kids be kids more often, and lessen the noise of me having to listen to them “being kids.”  Kids are loud.  Headphones help to dull and soften their loudness.

As I am writing this one of my kids is screaming very loudly while they are playing downstairs.  She’s way too old to be screaming this loudly, but I am just not super concerned about it because the noise is heavily dulled and so it sounds like a gentle scream off in the distance.  Also, just to be clear, I can tell the difference between a fun/playing scream and an “I need help” scream.

I do feel obligated to share that the one thing I don’t love about this particular pair of headphones is that they talk to you too often.  Right when you turn them on they tell you what % they battery is at and what devices they are connected to.  They also like to tell me when I’ve walked away out of range of some device I am not currently using, and I find that incredibly annoying and not helpful.  And I am pretty sure there’s no way to turn this off.  I just chock this up to nothing is perfect, but they are mostly perfect.

It’s worth noting that Mr. Mostly Minimal has Beats Noise Cancelling Wireless Headphones, and he really enjoys them.  At the time he bought them, they were a good bit less expensive than the Bose headphones ($279 in Jan 2019), but I thought it was interesting that they have since raised their price and they are now $349.  The Beats headphones more seamlessly connect to apple devices without all of the jabbering in my ears, so that’s a big plus I think that’s overshadowed by the way they fit.  The Beats ones do not fully cover my ears as well as the Bose ones do, and as a result they sort of slowly push on my ears and are not comfortable to wear for long periods of time.  I’m big on comfort, so for me Bose headphones win.

If you have kids and you don’t own a pair of noise cancelling headphones, I think you should seriously consider an investment in some silence and solitude.  If your spouse, partner, etc. doesn’t own a pair of these and is in any way stressed in life, these will help.  Buy them a pair and they’ll love you for it!

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