More Lessons OR “Confessions of a Food Hoarder”
I’ve learned some very good lessons so far. Life-changing lessons, in fact. I applaud myself for steering ALMOST entirely clear of Amazon (see below for “New Things For Me to Consider”), and in doing so, I have gone back to the old-school practice of waiting. That’s right, when I have the urge to buy something, I need to understand that it won’t come to me rapidly. I now have to wait a few days for items I want, like going to www.betterworldbooks.com instead of amazon.com for my books. Waiting also gives me time to think through the spending decision, another very valuable lesson.
Without question, I am spending less money from week to week. I go to the ATM less often and I find myself having fewer and less costly expenditures. (And I don’t feel at all deprived).
In this post, I’ll explain yet another important lesson that grew from my determination to
(1) not patronize the companies or vendors whose organizational values are counter to my own,
(2) look for vendors who espouse and (even brazenly) embrace these values,
(3) suss out the complicating factors that make these first two actions a challenge
The lesson? Engaging in some very powerful insights about the joy of living when I spend conscientiously.
ME AND FOOD SHOPPING
I had a good, hearty laugh when I re-read my last post about hoarding. I was referring in the post to items like clothing, furniture, and the like. But what about food? I raise my hand as a confessor. I like having a refrigerator that is full, richly replete of the things I love. I’ll pick up a new thing to try, shop for a set of ingredients for a recipe, and pick up twice as many items I need because of a markdown. What’s the problem with food hoarding? For one, and I really hate to admit it, I tend to regularly waste food that I don’t prepare or eat. Growing up, my family relied a good deal on foods that didn’t quickly perish, hence the constant presence of Hamburger Helper boxes in the pantry and packages of meats and frozen vegetables in the freezer. I enjoy having fresh food in the house, but I run into the challenge of buying too much or making too much as though cooking for an army. Either way, too often I end up with rotten food or freezing the leftovers too long.
There’s also the issue of releasing fossil fuels into the environment when I drive to the store 2-3 times a week. I have carefully selected the stores that aren’t on my boycott list 1 as the ones where I do my shopping, and support the vendors whose values are closer to mine. But shopping at the smaller stores where the inventories are small means that I have to make special trips, thus expend more fossil fuels.
Some people have a way of addressing these issues effortlessly, but for me, it’s taken some time. In case there are those of you who find yourselves in similar predicaments, I’d like to share some of my new habits.
I started making large quantities of food when, at the age of 12 or 13, I became the designated cook in my large family of 8. As my own children were growing up, and even now as a retiree with no children at home, I still like making large quantities so I don’t have to cook every single evening. Again, little by little, I’m making more, and then being much more cognizant when I place the extras in the freezer.
OTHER THINGS I’VE BEGUN TO DO
Living close to a market would be ideal; I have long preferred living within walking distance of food markets but I don’t. I considered the idea of riding my bicycle to the nearest ethical grocery store, but I am quite far away from it. Because I use my car when I do grocery shopping, I now frequently travel to the store when I’m also out doing other errands. I exercise at the gym almost daily, leaving me plenty of days to tack on a shopping trip on my way home.
It seems that I can only find herbs that are sold in quantities much larger than I need, so I’m slowly getting better at organizing my meal plans on a weekly basis. This is super new for me --- I’ve been the the kind of person who’s decided what I’m making for dinner merely a few days before those meals AT BEST. I’m also determined to offer leftover herbs and other perishable food items to friends and neighbors.
Going to the farmers’ market and growing one’s own food, are two great ways to stay out of the claws of giant companies who love it when people shop often from their stories. Keep in mind that some of these stores are hostile toward farm workers. They count on making money while also denying the need for improved work conditions and better pay.
I haven’t started growing my own food just yet, but plans are in the making for next year. I truly enjoy local farmers’ markets.
Now that I’ve retired with no children at home and cooking for myself and my partner, I still have to be mindful about cooking food in large quantities. I’ve gotten much better at using coupons. I mean, not only save them and carry them into the store but also actually USE them! (I can be very forgetful).
Another environmental issue is packaging, like plastic containers for produce, not to mention the take-for-granted vessels used to store many laundry detergents. I’ve become more conscientious about this matter of packaging and will admit that making this shift is still a work-in-progress. My juggle is going to a store where I can get spices, oats, beans, and rice, for example, from bins to refill containers rather than continue to buy them in plastic bags. I like going to a locally-owned market that sells these and other products in bins and when making a grocery list, I try to time my visits there when I’m running out of these items. (Try Black-owned Cleo’s Bodgeo & Café at 2432 Dr. MILK, Jr. Street for those in Indianapolis). The separate listing helps me to avoid a very automatic practice of simply buying things from my list because I’m already in a store that sells them not in bins.
I shop at Costco every 4-5 weeks for bulk items, and this helps out with spending as long as I’m buying the things I really need. Costco is s place filled with lots of enticements and most recently, I completely avoided doing the walk-around and getting snared. I find myself doing a better job of simply going what’s on my list, and when I’m feeling more like moseying through a store.
When I first began working professionally, I recall taking pride in having a full refrigerator. It seemed like a symbol of success, that I had “arrived,” and that I had access to a variety of foods at a moment’s convenience. I need to let go of this imagery of success because it has me swept into habits that have proven wasteful and excessive. These habits reflect, to some extent, a level of unconscious conformity about what I need based on commercials and societal pressures, and are not signs of success.
Success, like good mental health, means being to free to be, thereby having awareness of the sorts of messages that are intended to encourage people to spend and not necessarily to think through what their spending on and who the money is going to.
Always an aspiration for me, to be truly successful is to honor self, others, and all living things as part of an interconnected and divine whole. It is to release myself from the images created by an industry that shows a lack of caring for human beings and environmental sustainability.
I still like shopping at grocery stores, trying new foods and indulging myself and my loved ones with new recipes, but I am working daily to avoid waste and unnecessary driving. I feel that this journey has been leading me to greater success.
NEW THINGS FOR ME TO CONSIDER
I’ve noticed recently that often when I chat with someone who isn’t aware of my boycotting and they end up sharing information about how well a particular product works, I hear these phrases quite a bit: “You can find it on Amazon,” or “It’s just down the street at the Walmart,” and so forth. These phrases seem practically instinctive. They evoke convenience, ease, even cost-efficiency, the things we all treasure in the midst of busy lives and climbing prices. I became attuned to this oft-used phrase years ago, but it’s very likely that it’s become more magnified in my mind because of my boycotting/reduced spending journey.
The speaker is undoubtedly sincere in nearly all cases. This is a sign that what the CEOs of the organizations that make or sell these products have been very successful at contributing to a culture that seems to rely on them. The people (and we ourselves) who express these phrases want to be helpful, perhaps even to build a common connection and bond with others people in sharing the knowledge. The connection is in all of us knowing that these stores are ubiquitous, accessible, and relatively inexpensive.
I don’t always reveal my boycott journey to the new people I meet because, I’ve been where they’ve been. Even with knowledge in hand, I still savored useful knowledge about products shared by so many and embraced the intent for bonding. But to continue to relish the embrace, I respond in a way that is non-reflexive. Instead of stating something like, “Yes, I should go there to get it,” or even to give a mini-lecture on why those products or vendors should be avoided, at least in my view, I may respond by sharing that I have found excellent alternatives to the product in question, like from local vendors that I like. If there’s time, I’ll talk about the shopping experience with those vendors. I also may have offer that I have tried a new way of doing without certain items, or rather than say replacing my floor tiles for new ones, I have tried looking for them at ReStore.
Making connections is important. Breaking the reflexivity that has been prompted by companies whose leaders lack moral direction is even more important. If there is an opportunity to interact more with them, then I’m willing to share more, but without the expectation that they’ll readily jump on board.
Note that I’ll mention a vendor or store on occasion, but because of the organization’s tax-exempt status, I do not state how I have come to choose these companies nor all the reasons for choosing them. Stated more plainly, my decisions could be viewed by the IRS as an espousing of political partisanship. (By the way, they are not.). If you would like to know more about my resources, I am happy to share them with you (chathomp@iu.edu).
