“Can we be done with this experiment?”
“There’s nothing to eat.”
“Do we have to have chicken AGAIN? That’s all we ever eat!”
Then I find out from our friend TC that RR’s BF want’s to send him a bag of Cheetos in a care package because he is suffering soooo much. Apparently RR told his BF that we aren’t buying any more food and he is starving.
This past week we learned that being less dependant on the grocery store requires EFFORT. It is possible to have things that are just as convenient, and often better tasting, and certainly better for you, but you have to plan ahead, and put in the time so those things are ready. Much of what is required is new habits. THAT is a PAINFUL process.
We have been making all our own bread for a couple of months now. We love it, especially the bagels (which we have for breakfast almost every morning.) But if we don’t pay attention to what we have, what we need, etc., we run out, and it takes more than just a 5 minute trip to the store fix the problem. It isn’t that much more effort than shopping (less for me, shopping gives me hives), but it is different effort.
Challenges this past week have been in the area of snacks. Besides the occasional Cheeto we love crackers, cheese, olives, chips, etc. Often lunch is an antipasto, salad, and a baguette. Finding ways to produce these here, or local sources for them is a big challenge. Finding alternatives, learning new habits of eating and thinking is an even bigger challenge.
There are other habits that we are beginning to grapple with too. Some are habits of living. We are learning to be more militant about turning things off, turning temperatures down, putting on an extra sweater, etc. We are learning other things to do with our time. (We canceled our cable service. $50.00+ a month for 15 minutes of news and 4 hours of mindless drivel suddenly seemed like a giant waste. Now we listen to NPR more, get better news coverage, and spend more time reading, playing games together, etc. It was rather painful to make that change. None of us realized how addicted to the box we had become.)
Some of the habits we are struggling with are habits of thought. These are harder to fix. Much of our struggle with being less dependant comes from conflicts with these habits.
- We have to work, what would the family/neighbors/church/friends/etc think if they knew we were just staying home?
- We have to work for a company so we can have insurance. (We have only been to the doctor 3 times in the last 5 years (touch wood) and have spent $32500.00 on insurance coverage. Not saying we don’t need insurance, things happen suddenly ,I know. But maybe there is a way to approach it differently. It will take a different mind set for sure.)
- FEAR. There is a certain amount of changing how you live that requires letting go and doing something different. It’s like tightrope walking. If you cling to, or focus on, or reach back for the platform, you fall. The only way to walk the rope is to commit 100%, let go, and walk. (Sounds good, but it is hard to do.)
What habits of thought or action are holding you back?
Diane (http://butterfliesandbumblebees.org/) posted this on my blog because she couldn’t get the comments to open here. Thought I’d share it.
I wanted to leave this comment on Not Dabbling in Normal, but was having trouble logging in….so I thought I’d leave it here for you on your going cold turkey!
Sounds like your doing it! Congratulations. We called this kind of thing “fasting” on what we have….no new food purchases; living out of the freezer, no new clothes, no new anything. Lots of popcorn! Yeah, breaking the mindsets is hard. We are so conditioned by our society. I love the Cheeto story!! Kids are inventive and that might just be a good thing. Mine always mooched because I wouldn’t buy junk food….at 5 he could mooch a snack bag from a perfect stranger! Now he’s 21 and can find a place to live for free….see it does come in handy at some point in life!
We live kinda weird compared to most, esp in our area which is the richest county in our state and the richest zip in our county! We unplug everything all the time. We put insulated panels in our windows to conserve energy. We make things from scratch. We grow our own food. We save our $$$. And we live in the DC/Balt rural suburbs and have 2 cows and 18 chickens!!!!!! YIKES! What do the neighbors think? That was my first thought when we brought the cows home. Now I’m quite comfy with all of it, mainly bc my animals are quieter than most dogs.
There are some insurance sharing grps that you might look at.
http://medi-share.org/ is just one. Growing a herbal medicine garden is my backup even though we have insurance. But there will come a day when we “retire” and will have to cut back considerably to pinch our pennies.
I’m looking forward to following your plunge.
After spending this year playing catch up with our health now that we have jobs that provide insurance, it’s not something I would want to go without. We spent quite a bit of $$ having to fix problems we let go unattended because we couldn’t afford things without insurance.
Perhaps you can whittle away certain parts of your insurance that you currently don’t need, many people can get away with just having “emergency” insurance to cover well emergency trips to the hospital, etc.
We were spending $4200 a year on HMO coverage for me when i never used it. I switched to a high-deductible coverage in case of a major accident or something, & use the $$$ we were using for my coverage to pay for natural care – routine acupuncture, CranioSacral work & other (but then, i have chronic illness).
I’ve had 1 Rx filled in the last 2-1/2 years – a topical powder for candida that the natural things were not helping.
When i had it filled the pharm-tech was concerned.
“You don’t have insurance coverage?” She asked. “This is expensive medicine.”
“How expensive?” I had visions in my head of $300 or more.
“It is $87.” She replied.
I smiled & told her it was ok. The Rx coverage i could get (with my high-deductible plan) would cost me a minimum of $21/month. I’ve not needed a script since July 2007. So, $21 x 31 months = $651. Plus i still would have had a $25 copay. I think the $87 for the one script i really needed is a much better cost than the $676 that script would have cost me had i paid for insurance.
The actual cost of our current “cheap food” is very high. The actual cost of “cheap prescriptions” is also very high. I would have been paying a lot of money in order to have a $25 copay on that script. It also gives me the incentive to use meds only when i REALLY need them.
Fear is a big thing to overcome. We are taught that money equates to safety, security and happiness, and it has become easy to trade our lives for it, in effective accepting the gilded cage in exchange for being able to take care of ourselves. I quit my well-paying job as a consultant in a large city and returned to the island where I grew up to help my father, a Depression – era child, to manage his 20 acres. I pay my own health insurance and, for now, live on savings and rental income. I feel strange going out during the day surrounded by people who ‘work’, and everday I fight the fear of not having the comfort of a biweekly paycheck. But I work harder than most to build a self-sustaining organic farm, when I’m not taking classes in horticulture, writing, or volunteering. I also draw strength from the efforts of people such as yourself who have taken the iniative to live differently. Best of luck to you.
I wouldn’t go back to my high-stress job for anything.
Your point about fear is well taken. I think it’s probably at the base of every assumption my hubby and I have had to re-examine in this journey (which is a continuing journey). We think of our life as our Best Life, and have given a long hard look at what that means for us, and not for others. There is a big result in doing things without accounting for others’ expectations or the sales job every swallows these days under the heading “the American way of life.” Result? Freedom
Some of our changes have been made and others will be but we are trying to find workable solutions. We cannot justify the percentage of our monthly budget that it would take to have full health insurance coverage for the long term, because our monthly budget will be based on our necessity and choices…to choose for growing our own food to be our Work rather than working fulltime for someone else. Therefore our budget will be miniscule compared to most, even poverty level, but we’ll be living rich in all the ways we most value. But you should hear how indignant many people are who insist we MUST pay health insurance of X amount because that’s what everyone else does and is the most RESPONSIBLE thing to do…as if we are being irresponsible in having overhauled our lives to live lightly, independently, and without consuming so much.
You’re right…habits are the big area of change. Even the habit of rethinking what constitutes necessities…and responsibility. Or allowing others to decide for us.
TV is a habit that I would love to give up but for us it is free with a 20 year old antenna so I do not have the $$$ argument to help convince hubby. We are trying harder to track where our money goes, we are not frivolous spenders but it still seems to fly away so we are going to try to pinpoint exactly where it is going so we can live more frugally. Kim
All those new neuronal connections you’re making by your grand experiment! Your brains are benefiting hugely and you set a really good example.
We gave up television service, per se, about a year ago for the same reasons you give: it feels better to take our news in through NPR’s calm voices or in writing; it allows us to titrate our reactions a little better than the OMG CNN approach. There was almost nothing else we watched regularly. But we love movies, so we purchased a ROKU player for $100 and a monthly subscription to Netflix. We get DVD’s from Netflix, but at no additional charge, we get an enormous (and growing) collection of movies downloaded to our computer and viewable on our TV. The documentary library is huge and there are old those quiet little British films I love, the indie stuff that never played anywhere near us, and the list goes on.
Take my TV, but leave me wonderful blogs to read! We all benefit from your “fast.”