waste less

Yesterday, I was looking over the Sunday ads as I’m apt to do after picking up the newspaper, and I started making a list, based off those sale items and loss leaders…just like always. I generally have what I consider to be a good grasp on what’s in my freezer and fridge. I know I’m out of milk, I know that my eggs (what’s left of them) are bad, and I know that I have no produce.

I pulled out my trusty calendar and considered… My big paycheck is the mid-month paycheck, so I like to pick up the bulk of my meat and dairy on that trip for the month. I suddenly remembered that I had half a gallon of milk frozen in the freezer, so I got up to set it out on the counter to defrost.

Pulling out the milk, I noticed some stew meat poking out from behind a half-pack of veggies. I pulled that out, and along came its brother and sister. I moved the veggies, then set them on the counter, only to find four meals worth of chicken behind them. Out came the pitas I froze, out came the other four packs of veggies, out came a strangely-wrapped plastic something.

I unwrapped the plastic and…GASP! I had three meals worth of ANGUS BEEF. Who put that there? And how long had it been there? On top of it, I had some butter, cheese, and hotdogs.

Now, keep in mind that my freezer is pretty darn small; the fridge is not a standard size. I think it’s what they call a 2/3rds fridge, because it’s shorter and skinnier than a regular one. That, of course, means that my freezer is about the size of a cubbyhole.

I was, honestly, surprised by all the stuff in it. I had enough meat at least to last me two to three weeks, if I were eating it every night. And get this: When I piled everything back in and organized it properly, I had room to spare!!

Because of this, I was able to eliminate the beef roast, steak, and chicken from my shopping list all together, leaving only the pork roast and shrimp on there (normally I don’t buy seafood, but shrimp is an AWESOME price this week, and one pound will last me five meals).

So take my advice: When making a grocery list, take a look at what you have before you automatically add those frozen items to your list. You’ll save time (choosing cuts and shopping), energy (lifting and hauling), and most of all, money (that beef wasn’t on THAT great of a sale anyway!).

“We say we waste time, but that is impossible. We waste ourselves.”
~Alice Bloch

In discussing how “comfortably green” I consider my sister today, we got onto the subject of wasting time. Essentially, the conversation went something like this (non-verbatim):

Me: I consider you “comfortably” green.
Her: WTFMAC?
Me: You recycle, you reuse, you don’t consume new products, you make a conscious effort to do your part.
Her: What do you think I could do better?
Me: I think you could waste less time.

This spiraled into a discussion about wasting time as a portion of one’s quality of life. My example to her was such:

Every day, I spend an hour one-way (two hours total) in the car to work. I have to work. I have to earn money. I like a full tummy and a solid roof over my head. But that two-hour span is wasteful, not only because I’m a solo-commuter and I drive a (small) SUV, but because I’m not doing anything to improve the quality of my life.

I used her as an example, too. The other night, she had a window of time between one obligation and another and stopped at the grocery store for one meal (A to-go meal, she said). I asked her, “What would you rather have been doing than riding the bus, searching for products the store didn’t have, standing in a long line of mothers who just picked up their bratty kids from school, and hopping another bus to your next destination?” There’s no question that she needed to eat something that night – absolutely none. But the hour, hour and a half that she spent getting that task done was wasted… she won’t remember it as a positive note on her life in ten years.

I used to take the train to work in the morning when I had my Uni job. Sure, it took me an hour and a half one-way, but I used an hour of that time to add to my current novel. Writing is something that I feel enriches me and my quality of life… it allows me to be creative and thoughtful, even if I’m not changing the world.

In ten years…will I still long for that hour and a half commute so that I can write on the train? Yes. I’ll remember it as a great experience: Writing on my laptop on a very comfy train while the Sound’s sunrise blessed my little traincar.

In ten years, there’s no way I’ll think of my hour-long commute now as a happy experience. I’m wasting two hours of every day seething over that jacka** who cut me off two exits back.

And so, I give you the quote from up top – are we wasting ourselves by wasting time? So many people don’t consider time a wasted thing; they figure they HAVE to spend the time to do this or that (such as work or school), that they HAVE to be miserable at their obligations, and that it’s just part of living. Where some of that is true (not the miserable part, folks!), if we work to make the best of what we have, we’re neither miserable nor wasteful… We lead better lives by paying ourselves first and finding a way to enjoy every minute.