Minimalism

I can't stop laughing at the title of this blog post.

If you know me, you've likely seen the inside of my car/house/purse/life, and know that I am very much not a minimalist. I would love to be a minimalist, I think, but I'm failing pretty hard at it, over here. Except, of course with groceries.

Relative to what it used to be like when I would grocery shop without a plan, my pantry and fridge now sometimes look like a barren wasteland, and I love it. Instead of staring at bottle upon bottle of expired and duplicate condiments looking for something I could actually feed my family, I open to the fridge to find fresh ingredients that work together to make a real meal. Instead of pushing past unrecognizable leftovers, trying to remember when was the last time I even made that meal, I can open a tupperware container (even the opaque ones) without having an anxiety attack about what biohazard is waiting inside.

I mean, for the most part, anyway. I'm not perfect. I still find a forgotten container of something or other at the back of my fridge, or a lone, shrivelled vegetable festering in the drawer, but for the most part my fridge has only the items I can and do use, and already have a plan for.

You guys. It feels so good.

I've read about minimalism and getting rid of stuff, and not bringing in more stuff and living your best life with only 3 pairs of pants and your acoustic guitar, but it's freaking hard, and overwhelming and I didn't know where to start. I've been accumulating and emotionally attaching myself to useless garbage for 33 years, now, after all. So, I did what pretty much nobody was doing, and I started in my fridge.

My fridge was disgusting. I'm not even going to sugar coat that so that I sound better on the internet. It was gross, and I felt gross for allowing it to get like that, but we're not here to judge; we're here to get better. Sometimes, I knew I had something rotten or old or mushy or whatever in my fridge, but I was always committed to dealing with it "later". After I make breakfast, or fold this pile of laundry, or do school drop off, or once the baby is napping, or, let's be honest, after I scroll through my news feeds 35 times, then I'll go clean out the fridge. On the list of chores that are awesome, cleaning out the fridge does not even rank.

One day, I don't even know what happened, maybe the internet was down or something, but after the kids went to bed, I cleaned out my fridge. I took out all the shelves and scrubbed them down in the bathtub, and I threw out everything that should have been gone a long time ago. It sucked, and I hated every minute of it. But then it was done, and I haven't had to do a major fridge scour again, since.

My actual fridge right now. If someone tried to take a picture of the inside of my fridge last year, I would have burned my house down to prevent it. Also, it's grocery day, today, so this is extra lean, even for us.

After I had cleaned it out, I gave myself a pep talk/private shaming, and really made a better effort to go to the grocery store with a plan for the food I wanted to buy. I mean, it's all well and good to watch for sales and price match, but if you price match your lunch meat and then throw it away when it has turned green three weeks later, you've saved nothing. If you see a good deal on your favourite salad dressing and buy 5, but then never plan to make salads and they all expire before you use them, was it really a good deal? If you make a point of shopping at the more expensive grocery store (I'm looking at you, Sobeys) because "they have better produce", does the quality of the produce even matter if you're just letting it sit in the crisper drawer until it's shrivelled or wilted or mushy enough throw away?

Grocery minimalism has made me more purposeful about the food I buy. Whatever goes onto my list or into my cart first faces these three questions:

1. Am I willing to pay this price?

2. Will I use it?

3. When?

I don't always buy things at their historic lowest price, but I do only buy things at a price I am willing to pay. If I have made a meal plan and then start checking prices while I make my list to find that an item I need is not on sale anywhere that week, or is an unreasonably high price, I will scrap that meal or item. For example, I only buy cucumbers if I can get them for a dollar or less each. In the winter, that is not usually realistic. We like them for a snack, so I always check them on the shelf/search for them on flipp, but if they're over a dollar, I just cruise on past to the carrots or celery instead.

Sometimes (almost always), a multi pack of cucumbers is a better deal than buying singles, but it's not always the best deal for our week ahead. If I'm only going to use 1 and then hopefully find a way to use the other 2, I'm not buying the 3 pack. Have you had the pleasure of dealing with a soggy, rotting cucumber? It is amazing. Same goes for those annoying deals at Superstore where each item is, like, 20 cents cheaper if you buy them in multiples of 2. I don't really need 2 tubs of sour cream with the same expiry date in my fridge. The 20 cent savings means nothing if I throw away a full container of moldy sour cream next month. (PS, Superstore, why do you have the buy multiple deal on so much dairy, anyway? Whipping cream, cream cheese, sour cream, buttermilk... why? It's so annoying. I'd be way more likely to fall for your stupid ploy on non-perishables, but whatever). The point, here, is to only buy what you know you're going to use right away.

Don't be a hero. If you don't know exactly how and when you're going to use that head of cabbage, leave it at the grocery store. (Also, thanks to my friend, Amanda, for sharing this image with me).

Once I got a handle on only buying what I had a plan for, we actually started eating better, too. If I bought a bunch of vegetables to make a snack platter, I actually washed and cut the veggies and made the platter instead of heavy sighing at the thought, and bypassing it all for some chips from the pantry. In this new scenario, I didn't buy the chips for the pantry, because they weren't in the plan. Veggies and dip it is! (I still buy chips, don't be crazy, but I don't buy as many).

The state of my fridge, freezer and pantry honestly used to keep me up at night. I might have been mentally scanning the shelves trying to figure out what I could piece together to feed the family, or quietly shaming myself over the freezer burnt mystery meat or who knows how old leftovers, or just wondering how it was possible that the shelves were all full, but there was nothing to actually eat. Now, I can glance quickly at my plan or my cupboards, and see right away what I'm making or what I need to buy. Not stocking up may mean more frequent trips to the grocery store, but it also frees up a lot of my grocery budget for fresh foods, and new ingredients or foods to try. Besides that, I found that I was already scrambling off to the grocery store fairly often before, anyway, because even though I might have been stocked on staples, I didn't always have what I needed to actually cook a meal.

Minimalism is hard. Trust me, this is not an easy thing for me. I once learned something at work about loose parts being great for young children (and they are), and then spent the next 5 years hoarding basically every loose part that crossed my path.

I saved pretty much every lid I ever touched for like 5 years for my kids to play with. It's a wonder I'm even still married. (They loved them, by the way. I regret nothing).

It took a long time to coach myself out of filling my cart with alllll the cans. I used to buy the fruits and vegetables I thought we should be eating, instead of the foods we actually ate. Once I got going, though, it was easier and easier to stick to the program. Especially since grocery minimalism also allowed me to make my weekly grocery budget smaller overall. We were able to allocate money I used to spend on unused groceries to other areas of our lives like debt retirement, savings, or a vacation. Seeing that money add up in my bank account instead of in the garbage is also super motivating.

With stuff, I could rationalize that I might use it or need it or want it again someday, and that I could store it in the meantime. Most groceries, on the other hand, will eventually rot or expire and just get tossed. When you stay conscious of the fact that the money you spend on unused groceries is taking an indirect route to the garbage can via your fridge, it becomes easier to leave stuff out of your cart.

How do you grocery shop? Do you buy food you think you're going to use, and keep a pantry stocked with backup staples? How much of your grocery budget is going to food you keep in storage or let spoil? If you're already going to the grocery store once a week, is it really necessary to buy 2 months worth of anything while you're there? Are you willing to designate your next 2 grocery trips to items you need right now? Try it, and see how it makes you feel.