The Simple Poppy

The Iron Dilemma

 

 

 

    On the heels of my success with line-drying, I've been thinking about laundry a lot this week. So this weekend I did some big simplifying. Well, for me anyway. It might be pathetic to the rest of you.

    First a little history. I was not big on ironing, probably because my mom did it when it was deemed necessary rather than it being de riguer. When I got married I quickly realized that in The Simple Man's family, going out in clothes that had not been pressed into a state of mute submission was like walking around naked. Yes, buck naked. It was that shameful.  And thus began my long struggle, one that has reduced me at times to a quivering and homicidal mess, contemplating whether a splattering of The Simple Man's brains would ruin my Rowenta iron. I have alternately soldiered on or despaired, either way there was always an enormous pile of clothes to be ironed.

    I know other people are able to iron all their laundry and hang it up and not think it's a big deal. I bow to their superiority. I have to wonder if their spouse is as troublesome and picky as mine when it comes to ironing. You see, I had to iron every item of The Simple Man's anywhere from 2 to 3 times before it was washed again. Here's how it went. I ironed his shirts. I hung them up. Later in the week he  would bring me the still perfectly ironed shirt and insist that its  collar or whatever got wrinkly hanging in the closet and would I please iron it again. I would iron it for the second time. If he wore it out for a substantial amount of time (Did the armpits get stinky?) he would put it in the hamper. If he didn't wear it long enough to get funky, which  would usually be the case because he doesn't wear button downs at home, he would take it off. And then throw it on a chair with ten other semi-clean shirts, or ball it up on top of his dresser. A week would go by and he'd bring it down yet again for me to iron a third time. Usually after this he decided it's dirty. Are you still with me?

    Yeah. Sigh.

    I've been ironing "on call" now, which reduces the ironing sessions by one. But I still had my enormous pile of ironing. I hadn't really committed to the idea of "giving up." I was still in the mindset that I was behind. But now, my friends, I know. I know that I will always be behind. I might not if he could live with having his clothes ironed only once, but so far that doesn't look promising. And I really love that man and I don't want to hurt him. So I've decided I'm putting the clothes away wrinkly. It eliminates my ironing pile and reduces the times I have to iron his stuff.

    As dumb as it sounds, this simplifies my routine quite a bit. Even though I've always known that I make things too complicated for myself, now I know the name of what I'm missing. According to Colleen at 365 Things, I'm not "lazy smart." I've known this for years, but I don't know how to train myself to think of the most efficient and easy way out. Maybe people are just born with it! Anyhow, I'm pretty happy about how this will streamline the wretched laundry routine a little bit more.

 

 Tell my I'm not the only one with ironing problems!

 

 

Photo: http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=download&id=446971

 

 

Monday Morning Mess

 

Monkeys.  So cute.  And so messy.

 

We might be the only family (but I doubt it) whose home looks like primates from the zoo broke in over the weekend, held a wild party involving illicit bananas, cross dressing, baba ganoush, unlovely stripteases, with the finale ending in a session of frenzied My Little Pony ink stamping on every available surface before falling asleep with chocolate (hopefully) and tear smeared faces, and perhaps, as a nod to the changing season, some autumnul detritus in hair. Oops. I mean fur.

Every Monday morning. Our house. It looks like this. Does yours?

There is something that happens when people are home all day with no schedule to speak of. There is a lot of flinging about of stuff. There is flopping about on the couch. There is that happy bubble that exists until Sunday afternoon when the employed in the house realize that tomorrow is Monday. Yeah, that wouldn't be me - because I actually work through the weekend. Which begs the question. Since I am working throught the weekend how in the name of all that is holy does the house still end up like this?

I think a lot of people, usually mothers, are reluctant to "make" people do things because they don't want to be the bad guy and spoil everyone's fun. Somehow it doesn't matter to us that we are sitting there, anxious over the mess, thinking about how when everyone else is going to bed we will be cleaning up a lot of things that don't even belong to us.

So, in honor of this weekend, which was spent, on my part, entirely in selfless duty volunteering by selling books at a fair, I'm instituting two new evening rules in this house.

• Before dinner, everyone's personal items must be back where they belong, or out of my sight. If not, I will be putting them out of my sight - but not where they can be found. If you catch my drift.

• One half hour every Sunday afternoon we'll all get together and quickly go through the entire house tidying.

We have done these things in the past but they always fall by the wayside with even the slightest disruption of schedule. I believe it's important for families, especially children, to understand the consequence of owning things. If they never have to pick up, move around, put away, pack up, fold, find a place for, carry around etc. their own stuff, then they won't fully grasp the impact stuff has on their lives. Meanwhile, the impact their stuff is having on your life is making you want to take a sledgehammer to it. I fully admit having gotten to this point over and over again and it really illustrates to me how unhealthy owning too much really is. Which is why I still keep trying to bring that lesson home to the people I live with.

Today, unfortunately, has to be spent trying to put the house to rights after a tornado of a weekend. Here's to less - now and in the future.

 

 

 

photo: http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=download&id=1156861

 

Design

husohem

   Don't worry, this post has no barf, bananas, or any combination thereof and I will not be rubbing dirt, poop, or compost into my hair. I won't be talking about environmentalism, worms, or minimalism. Okay, well, maybe a teeny tiny bit of the latter, but not really!    This post is all about interior design style. As in: I have none.    I spend a lot of time at home. I work at home, I home-school, and none of us are social butterflies - there is a lot of home time. So, while I'm not about to take myself to locked room with a trunk full of Pottery Barn catalogs and look at them until my eyes glaze over and I go into a Pottery Barn induced coma, I would like my home to have a more cohesive and calm look. 

tommie wilhelmsen

  I've always thought this wouldn't be possible because there are things I cannot do and also loathe:

• Match ANYTHING

• Buy curtains (for some reason this really sends me into conniptions - I'd rather walk to Alaska. From the East Coast. Bears be damned)

• Pick out paint colours

• Actually decorate. Meaning: rugs, pictures, candles, blah blah blah. I can't do it and I don't really care. 
  

   Except that I kind of do really care. I mean, I don't care enough to waste a lot of time, but I don't like that my home looks like someone threw a handful of toddlers, fabric, and paint in it and barked, "Get to it!" My brain is a very busy and noisy place - it needs for my eyeballs to tell it that my body is living in a peaceful, clean place.

    I think part of the problem is that I grew up in a very colourful family. My mom and all my sisters have a style I would call Bohemian/Moroccan. It's warm, sensuous, intricate, and decorative. My mom loves apricot hues; my sisters are all fiends for reds, blacks, and purples. Everyone but me. I'm uh, pretty Nordic. I like white. And a blue I like to call pool, very pale with a hint of aqua. And that's about it.  I've killed myself painting the rooms in our house so many times because it never felt right but I didn't want white because everyone said it was boring. And not warm. And boring. But now I realize I like it because it's not distracting. Also, our house is depressingly dark due to lack of windows and white makes it lighter. I think what confused me was that I love my mom's house. I feel comfortable there. It's cosy and wonderful. I think that and the fact that everyone else I'm around is into warm colours and sumptuous fabrics convinced me I was going about decorating all wrong. After years of well meaning people telling me that all white is too cold, too uniform, and too whatever, I've just learned to accept that it's what I like and I'm going to stick with that next time something needs doing around here. Plus, seriously? These pictures? Don't they blow the whole white is boring out of the water?

   

English Muse  

   I think the reason I'm able to see this now is because I've worked hard to downsize our stuff. It looks much better, which kind of got me thinking about my yellow walls and red curtains. I know. Shudder.

  

   Design magazines and catalogs typically don't inspire me. There are usually too many items in the room and it just looks cluttered and ridiculous. But because I'm design stupid, I tend to need a security blanket to go back to and boy am I happy I found this blog:

My Scandinavian Retreat

    She collects photos of Scandinavian style from everywhere on her blog. It's like taking a long sigh of relief to sit down and look through it.

    So I'm off to buy a bolt of white linen and replace the red curtains. There might be some whining on the part of The Simple Man because he is a red lover, but he'll get over it. As long as the room looks habitable, he's fine.

What's your design style? And have you allowed others to influence it? Against your will, dangit?!

ETA: All photos are from the blog I mentioned, via or otherwise, original sources under photo when I could find it!

What's Cluttering Up My Crib

This has been a wickedly busy week - hence the light posting.

    The Simple Man is away for a few days. While my first thought at hearing this should have been to sob with anticipated loneliness, I immediately started craftily planning all the things I could do without him here. Like have some uninterrupted (if you don't count the monkeys) time to throw junk away. This is easier without him here for a few reasons.

Inevitably, we will come to grief over something I want to throw out. Mind you, I never go through his things, but there is a fair amount of owner-less items (particularly papers) that he didn't know we had, hasn't looked at in years, but is seized with the desire to keep once he sees them. So, mercifully, we have both been spared that scenario. The other two big reasons are that I don't have to cook dinner (the girls and I are perfectly happy with fruit and bread) and I'm relieved of the daily tidy up before he comes home so it won't look like I invited an army of awesomely costumed Mexican wrestlers to the house to practice. 

   I've been concentrating on one room at a time and it's been great. I also finally hit upon a formula that works with my eldest, who is a packrat. I read this suggestion on a minimalist/decluttering blog somewhere and can't remember where - so if you recognise it please tell me. Basically the idea is to put yourself in the mindset that if all of your stuff was taken and sent to a pawnshop or something, what would you actually buy back? This worked marvelously well on my 8 year old, especially now that she has some savings of her own. I used to go the William Morris route: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." Somehow that doesn't work well for children. They think everything is beautiful and they're not at the useful stage of owning yet. It was funny because as she was putting things in the giveaway box she would say, "I really like this Mom, and it's so pretty, but I'd never buy it with my own money!"

    You know how you always have all this weird stuff that makes you scratch your head wondering why, oh why do you still have it? Yeah. Here's a partial list from this past week:

• Elaborate instructions on how to make a Chinese takeout container bag out of velvet. Gah! I hate handbags - what am I doing with this?
  

• 157 recipes for things too complicated to make
  

• An entire plastic grocery bag of the extra wooden bits left over from making a toy model
  

• Old computer manuals I've never even cracked open - seriously, if something goes that wrong, I throw it in the car and drive to my local and very helpful computer nerds
  

• About 15 computer games/programs left over from the archaic 90's
  

• 3 teeny tiny lamps I thought would make good nightlights...and my kids like to sleep in the dark

• Dried up highlighters out the wazoo, mostly left over from my college days that ended almost a decade ago
  

• Approximately 50 or so "pictures" drawn by my eldest, who has little artistic ability or interest (I say this  lovingly, she has mad skillz in building, from scratch, wood vehicles powered by electricity - so I think engineering is more her thing) and which consisted mainly of a bunch of creepy circle people. I felt a little bad about this, but we used to over-encourage her to draw because we thought it was good for her until we realized how much she hated it and preferred other things, so I only kept the few pictures that really came from her. Strangely, those are better than the others. Hmmm. Parenting lesson here somewhere.
  

• About 12 assorted cords: ethernet, USB, phone...blah, blah
  

• A ton of acrylic paints from my days when I wanted to believe I could do more than watercolours, ink and pencil.

And finally the crowing glory of my clutter:

500 Dollars!

    I found this money in various cards from our wedding and when we had our first child. I guess that explains why I was too wifty to take it out and actually use it.

What are some items you know you need to go through but your heart shrivels at the thought?

The Space Emerging

 

  I started taking violin lessons when I was six. After a week I was incredibly disappointed that while I had been envisioning playing like Yehudi Menuhin at this point, I was actually just having to cut my nails all the time, learn the notes, and my fingers hurt a lot.  I did really enjoy rosining my bow, though. Of course, over time, I played much better, though admittedly not like my boy Yehudi. Sigh.

    So I find myself feeling the same way about minimalism. I'm not a patient person. And I am a busy person. I would really, really love to clone myself at least 5 times, rip apart the house and then be done with it. NOW. I've been feeling rushed and panicky because even though I'm pretty steadily decluttering, my house doesn't look that much different, nor does it feel easier to maintain. I was getting discouraged. I want to organize and yet how can I organize anything when there is still a lot more to declutter? By corralling my junk I'm not only wasting my energy but I'm making it less visible for decluttering. This is not to say that everywhere you look there is stuff scattered around, no. It's just that, especially with children, I think it's vital to be hyper organized with the items you do have so that more time can be spent romping around and less time yelling and indulging in pyromaniac dreams of burning everything. But I realize now is not the time for serious organizing; it just isn't possible. But I've seen something promising when I take the time to look around my house without a negative eye. I see space emerging. I know that's a good sign. I know that when enough space emerges, it will be a thousand times easier to find a permanent place for everything and then I can breath a sigh of relief. I can make do until then.

    I went through my toddler's toy bag and yanked all the infant toys out. At this point she is far more interested undressing her doll, books, and playing with household items - some baby will like them.

    Also, books. Again. Oy, this is tedious. I think I would actually give away a lot more books if we weren't homeschooling. My frugality wins out over minimalism because we have many books that I know I am going to use in their schooling. There is no way I wish to buy them again when the time comes to study them and I don't trust that the library will necessarily have them all. Still, I did manage to get rid of books that had duplicate information in them, several novels I thought I loved but when briefly scanned prior to giving away realized they made me depressed and stabby, and a lot of very old, tatty poetry books that I know I can find elsewhere or at the library. Still, by the end of my decluttering (in the year 2025, most likely) the item we will have the most of in this house is books. I find I don't care. I care if I have books I don't love, but I'm fine with owning the many books I do love.

My Sad Garden

    My garden has been less than stellar this year. I was incredibly excited at the beginning of the year and then...real life arrived with boxing gloves on. And while I quite like to watch, occasionally, a good bout of boxing, I'm not a participant. Real life knocked me...um, down.

    I did a lot of careful planning, I bought heirloom seeds that would do well in micro conditions, and I double dug our entire yard, as well as building brick raised beds. But through all of this we had a series of unfortunate events. For months on end I had no car, rendering it pretty difficult to purchase some of the soil amendments I really needed. I guess I'm not hardcore enough to wrangle my children and some 50 lb bags of whatever soil improvement I needed, onto the bus. When The Simple Man finally bought a car in April, guess what it needed? A transmission! More waiting. The weather was also changeable; it would rain for weeks on end, then get too cold do put anything out, then we'd have some nice days. On account of Little Red Chili's sleep debacle , by then I'd be too exhausted to do much of anything. I also didn't take into account how hard it is to concentrate on planting when you live 5 feet from a busy street and your two year old might be a shapeshifter who transforms into a cheetah once we step outside the front door.

 This sunflower attracts more insects that I thought possible. It's not one of the really large ones, but it doesn't have to be to brighten up our deck.

Some lettuce mix, Mesclun, I believe, growing in a bucket. I'm leaving it alone even though it is clearly over seeded because it belongs to Pumpkin.

Waiting, oh waiting for my Paul Robeson tomatoes to get ripe. Planted them a bit late, so they're a tad behind.

 

Jalapeno peppers

Horseradish planted in an old mop bucket. Yeah, this wasn't my idea. I like the way it looks but my soul is crawling out of its skin thinking about the germs. The Simple Man always has novel potting ideas.

My Pixwell gooseberry tree/bush. I don't know why it leans like that; it has nothing to do with the sun. I received it with its 2nd year wood, so I'm hoping that next year it will bear fruit. And these things are so hardy, it's one of the best looking plants we have after this atrocious summer.

Sweet potato, carefully edited because it doesn't look so hot. This is the second year we've grown only a few sweet potatoes and both times we've just winged it. There seems to be a lot of conflicting information on them. Or we aren't smart enough to find good info.

 

 These Morning Glories are twining themselves all over our front patio. It's a lovely sight, particularly in the very early morning.

    I'm a regretful that I couldn't or didn't make a better show of it, but I'm also trying not to be too hard on myself. It was a hectic time with a lot of unforeseen challenges and I learned a lot. I've been gardening for years, but you always learn something new. I'm hoping that the fall plantings do well and that we are able to grow some nice winter greens all winter in a cold frame.

    How are your gardens coming along, if you have one? Wish you did more, like me, or are you happy with the way it is?

Declutter Days

    I'm going to declutter/minimalize/simplify something for a few minutes every day for 30 days. And take pictures of it, just because I think I'd like to inflict that on everyone. I'm also going to pretend that it is the beginning of the month instead of the middle because 1) it really bothers me not to start at the beginning of the month and 2) I know that's weird and I'm having to act like it isn't KILLING me to not start this on the first day of the next month. 

 

 

    I finally did my kitchen, getting rid of some pots and pans that I had of a duplicate size, ice cream bowls, and other sundry items. One item not pictured is the microwave. We hardly ever use the microwave, maybe once a week. In a kitchen as small as ours, I just can't justify it taking up so much space. I realized I would rather take a little extra time to heat something rather than have that space wasted. While I'm happy to have gotten rid of the things I did, I was sort of disappointed that in doing so my kitchen did not magically transform itself into a light, clutter free space with enough cabinet and counter room. I opened my eyes and I still had ghetto kitchen. Back to building cabinets. Humph. 

   

 

 

    Baby clothes. Eh, this is tricky. I'm pretty good about weeding out what the children have outgrown, but I have kept some items for sentimental reasons. I've also kept some things just in case. You know, for JUST IN CASE. I don't want to give everything away, but it seems a bit silly to hold onto it. We don't even have much because I've always been a total minimalist when it comes to baby items. Babies R Us makes me sweat. 

    Magazines. I'm not a big magazine person. I used to buy one particular magazine every month for a year or so, several years ago. What? They had good recipes! My Mom also gave me a subscription to one and so I do have a pile (not too big) to go through. I have a hard time just throwing out anything readable, and there are actually a lot of recipes I use in these so I'm combing them for what I want and then recycling them. 

Overall, pretty good for one week. I think it's much harder to get rid of items you know to have value and use than otherwise. I kept hemming and hawwing over the pots, even though I had ones of the exact same size already in my cupboard. You have to go into it with a certain ruthless mindset. Luckily, ruthless mindsets are my specialty.

Housekeeping

    I like to think of myself as a housekeeper. Really. I don't think it's as derogatory as it sounds; I am the Keeper of the House. I imagine a personage with a title like that ought to be wearing some sort of robe, carrying a staff, and possibly participating in archaic British rituals that involve knocking on doors late at night while intoning 'I am the Keeper of the House.'  I think it has a rather grand flavor to it. And just to be absolutely clear, when I say housekeeper, I'm thinking more along the line of the strong, attractive, competent Miss Kenton...

...and not the sadistic, creepy, and eventually hysterically insane Mrs. Danvers.

    Apparently I am doing this housekeeping business so well that The Simple Man thinks there is nothing to it. For right now, I'm going to take that as a compliment. Some day though, when the kids are grown up enough to stop pooping on themselves, but not grown up enough to be actually tidy, I'm going to leave on a nice, solitary, vacation. I'm going to soak up some nature, have peaceful little kayak trips, sip steaming tea in silent bliss, read books all day long, and watch movies before I go to bed.

Brief Rant:

    On an almost utterly unrelated note, how come a mother who wants/needs a little time away from her children is branded as some selfish aberration of nature?  Also, why is it other mothers that have a problem with this? And if mothers' really are supposed to have a hard time leaving their children for a small while with loving caretakers, what does that kind of thinking imply about men who blithely work outside the home and spend most of their time away from the children? That they should feel bad about it? Or that they have no heart? If you miss your kids too much for some alone time, fine. If you don't, that should be fine too. Good post about this here.

End Rant.

    All joking aside, I view housekeeping as a serious business. I'm very frugal. I try to be tidy and organized in a house full of monkeys. I plan, shop for, and prepare all of our meals from scratch. I'm growing a micro-garden. I sew for both the house and the people in the house. I'm always looking for ways to save us money and improve our quality of life.  As Keeper of the House, I also care for the inhabitants of the house.  Now, this year, I'm homeschooling my oldest. Yeah, she's been learning for years; how do you stop a child from learning? She reads, she writes, and she does figures and now she is 8. Which means I have to jump through the many, many hoops that Pennsylvania thinks will discourage me from homeschooling her. I say HA! I'm on to you people. We can't afford private school (and I have issues with them also) and the public schools have...well, we live in a district with chronic problems such as violence, illiteracy, and an enormous high school drop out rate. The schools are failing and everyone is fighting about how to fix it with no money. So, just as my parents did with me under similar, but not quite as poor circumstances, we're opting out. I certainly think I'm going above and beyond my Keeper of the House duties (but duh, not my parental duties); it is well worth it.

    I'm not ashamed of this position. I know I'm doing something good for all of us. I don't consider my degree wasted. I think there is a lot of value in keeping the house and family on an even keel. I am teaching my kids the basics: budgeting, cleaning, maintenance, and how to fix easy, healthy, inexpensive food. Hopefully, when they grow up this knowledge will prevent them from making stupid mistakes. Besides, how could I be unhappy as Keeper of the House?

   

  

I Love You, Paper!

    I'm now getting to the point in my decluttering/fruitless quest for less, where things are becoming difficult. This may entail some wailing, beating of breast, and possibly shaving my head. Donning some mourning clothing and moping around the house might work also.

    I can throw or give away just about anything but paper. I can toss clothes, toys, candles, old fabric, virtually anything else. Oh, Paper, why, why, do you have such a death grip on my soul?! I'm, of course, not talking about bank statements. Ew, no. I'm talking about all the interesting tidbits that have come across my path in 32 years; I'm talking about ephemera. Books, old letters, pictures, post cards, cuttings from anything that caught my eye.

    Why did I keep this, the illustration from a local play a friend was in 15 years ago? I should think it is obvious. Don't all girls love a naked, bald, angel-man with wings, sitting around smoking a cigarette?

    My sister and I were given a massive Grimm's Fairy Tales when we were young. The spine broke and the pages  fell out. The pictures were so detailed and wonderful that we cut them all out and kept them.

    Postcards that have never been sent. Marlon Brando. Bonnie and Clyde. Edna St. Vincent Millay. I have many, many postcards of old portraits. I'm fascinated by people's faces, particularly from an era before silicone, veneers, and botox were the norm. Plus, I really want to remember Marlon Brando before he became a mafia walrus.

    I use to draw and paint quite a lot before I was married. I have so many half finished sketches it's pathetic. This one was inspired by a German fairy tale that I believe was named The Magic Bullet. There are probably many versions, but in this one the Devil sells a hunter some magic bullets promising they will hit their mark. He doesn't tell him that one of their marks is the hunter's beloved, which is why the hunter is going through all this in the first place. Boo hoo. And yes, I'm overly fond of giant adam's apples and hooked noses.

   It's going to be very hard for me to go through these papers. I'm not planning on throwing everything out - I just couldn't right now, and maybe not ever. I do know there are definitely items that don't mean anything to me anymore, or at least mean less to me than they used to. I know it seems ridiculous to be so attached to paper, I have this problem with my books too, but I think everyone has some type of possession that creeps up on them. They may end up having too much because they are attached, or it might be because of a perceived need. Or a little of both. Like my mother (sorry Mom! If I tease my lovely Mom enough it might goad her into commenting. Maybe). I'm outing her as a mostly reformed basket collector. I counted 23 baskets in her bedroom alone at one time. And her bedroom wasn't big. Why? Because she was organizing her stuff rather than getting rid of it and the pretty baskets probably just made it easier to justify having it there. I think all of us have been there at some point, where we are pushing our stuff around the house, keeping it in neat containers, where it makes us crazy. So, now my papers are making me crazy. I'm going through them. I'm not going to cry. Maybe I'll just tape some paper tears to my cheeks.

    What is the hardest thing for you to purge?

Stockpiling

 

    Stockpiling is really handy, most particularly if you have a family. Or don't like to shop. Or like to be able to offer surprise guests something more than a wilted, hairy carrot and some baked tofu from a few nights ago whose edges are curling up. If you aren't familiar with stockpiling, it's basically having enough food on hand to last you a specific amount of time. I'm not talking about frantically digging a secret hideout in your backyard and filling it with gallons of canned peaches and automatic weapons in preparation for the end of civilization. No - I'm not talking about doomers here. Or hoarders. I'm talking about everyday people who might like to make their life a little easier.

    For instance, if I had been keeping up my stockpiling like I should have, I would not now be contemplating what a fifth night of cabbage is going to do to the family's digestive system, their love for me, and finally, my marriage. You see, last Friday The Simple Man's car died on the way to work. It's finished, there isn't any point in fixing it. Luckily, we had an extra car that was fine except for needing a new transmission. Ha ha ha. So while the junkyard keeps bungling our transmission order, The Simple Man is taking the car, my car, to work. I'm at home, melting in 96 degree weather, boiling some cabbage because we have nothing else.

    I used to pretty good about keeping 2-3 weeks of food in the house. I would've liked to keep more, 6 weeks to two months worth, but we have almost no storage space in the kitchen.  I have always been an every other week shopper because I loathe grocery shopping. It is mind numbing. This is only, and I do mean only, accomplished by making a really detailed menu plan for two weeks. Lately I just haven't had the motivation, despite my hatred for shopping, to menu plan. I know that technically this shouldn't have depleted my stockpile, but I've been to tired and discontented to care much. Our fifth Whole Foods visit in a week? Meh, who cares? Well gee, now that I don't have a car, I sort of care.

    Menu planning saves money, that has been well established. It also saves time. Stockpiling saves you from worrying and cabbage motivated homicide. It could be a minor situation, like ours, or it could be something more serious. This winter we had a several enormous snowstorms (the infamous Snowmageddon) and I had stockpiled food; we did fine. But it would have been very difficult to get out if I hadn't had enough food. Or if someone becomes ill, has a baby, loses a job, moves houses - any number of everyday scenarios where you don't want or need to be worrying about food. It's a great tool in the quest for simplifying life and self-reliance. It might make the minimalist in you, or me, shudder, but it's food! It gets eaten! It's not a big deal!
         
    Of course, this would have all been great for me to remember in my recent apathy. I guess boiled cabbage is the punishment.