After last weeks shock at the electric bill and then noticing the rising prices at the supermarket I feel in to my stinking thinking. This is my default mode when things get tough. I start thinking of all the awful things that could happen and what the worse case scenario would be. When I stopped and stepped back I realized that the worst thing could happen is loosing the house, we would have to move back to my mother in laws house. It wouldn't be great but we wouldn't be homeless. I'd have to start again, not great but not the end of the world. So instead of staying in that mode I pushed myself to be positive and proactive. Instead of thinking about the bad things I started to think what can I do to change this situation. I asked Mikey to make a new leaflet and to find a company that will distribute them. I canceled Netflix, we haven't watched anything on there for a few months, I'm keeping Hulu and Prime Video for now. I've thought about how I shop and how I can cut food waste, one thing is throwing out rice because there isn't enough for 5 people but enough for one or two. So I'm going to start freezing the left over rice. Cut down on instant foods and junk food. We don't eat out but sometimes get take away, maybe once every two months we get a MacDonald's lunch. Cooking from scratch and baking if we fancy a treat. I'm drinking lemon water instead of sports drinks and will start making ice tea instead of buying bottles of the stuff (saves on plastic too). I know my situation is not that bad! When I see news reports that people in the UK can only eat once a day my heart breaks. It's 2022, UK is not a developing country (and even in a developing country that is bad) people should not have to choose between buying food or having power!
I'm also trying to be cheerful. It's to easy to fall into a negative mind trap. My kids and the cats keep me amused. As I posted before Fluffy has a habit of finding interesting place to sleep or sit. The other day she was using Mikey. She saw a small lizard on the outside of the window. She jumped onto Mikey's shoulder to get close to it. She stayed there for about half an hour, even with Mikey moving around!
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| Fluffy trying to get the lizard. |
I've been doing the same- saving leftovers and "redoing" them! Rice is easy- you can use whatever is left in soups or stir-fries, or even mix it with some yogurt to have a mini-dessert!
ReplyDeleteBut yes, these days we need to be creative and stop the waste.
In some post you also mentioned use of plastic- I also keep plastic bags for cat litter but also use them as trash bags. Don't remember buying the actual trash bags- it was many years ago. Plus, I try to re-use everything multiple times.
With food, I try to buy food that is not packed in any plastic bags or boxes. Less waste but it is also cheaper. If you buy food that is in a fancy packet, you also pay for that box or whatever- not the food itself.