Books Read:
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter by Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler

“A wise man knows himself to be a fool, but a foolish man opens his wallet and removes all doubt”
from Dollars and Sense, p254

Another year. Another dollar. I said join me on my No Buy Year. Well I think a more realistic one is a Low Buy Year. Same thing but making better choices but not as severe.

I am making better choices. Last week I put some items into the virtual cart. I slept on in and then deleted them the following day. Nothing bought. Only imagined.

I have joined up with Mel Robbin’s “Best Decade Ever” and am dreaming bigger. Join that too if you like. It’s not too late.

Composting is something I want to get better at. In an ideal world I will eat everything I buy and there is nothing wasted. The spinach at the back of the vegetable drawer is never forgotten. There is no sloppy mess. Reality is something different.

I plan to take stock of everything in my kitchen. The edibles. We have tins in the wash house too. And more tins in the hall cupboard. Are we expecting a zombie invasion? No. We are stocking up for the unexpected. The emergency rations. If the power stopped and you had to fend for yourself how long would your pantry allow you to eat for? How long should that be? It depends on where you live, rural, town, city. It depends on the number of people in your household. It depends on the season too. If you were snowed in how long could you survive without leaving the house? I say that sitting here in summer. It is a hypothetical question for me. It never snows here.

Procrastination is the name of the game. I am living as I used to live when I lived in the countryside when the nearest supermarket was a 40 minute drive away. We had two freezers, shopped weekly and stocked up for what if the power cuts off. Lightening strike, car accident, high winds, forest fire. We prepared. I haven’t lived in a rural area for ten years yet my mind still haven’t realised that I no longer need to stock up like before. I have three supermarkets within a five minute radius. Make that four. One is open very long hours. I am never going to go without. I can simply hop in the car and get what I have forgotten.

Again in an ideal world I would have had my shopping list with me and I would have bought everything on it and so there would be nothing forgotten. Reality is not so easy.

The list of food inventory is a daunting task. Have you done this yourself? Do you do it every year? Every season? Never? I know I will find duplicates. I know I will find expired food. Some dates I will ignore and keep regardless. Some will be tossed into the bin. This is my task for January. My task to know what I have in order to use it wisely.

I love food. We have Japanese, Korean, Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese Middle Eastern and Italian ingredients. We do use them. It takes a lot of organising. I have fallen off the list. It is chaos in the cupboards. There are noodles. Oddles of noodles. Flat ones, thin ones, fat ones, white ones, brown ones, black ones, clear ones, buckwheat, bean, flour made ones, frozen ones, fresh ones and packaged dry ones. This is just the noodles. Now you can start to understand my reluctance to start.

Join me on my kitchen expedition. Discover the depths of your cupboards. Find what lurks beneath the bench and behind the tins. Place like with like. Devour the contents and make delicious meals. Would you go as far as writing out an inventory? And use it to make your future meals? Who knows what will happen until we begin.

Sober as. A bag of frozen noodles.