Sunday, January 17, 2010

Out of the frying pan into the fire...

Okay, so now that I am 'pot-committed' to this project (I started a group on facebook - does it get any more committed than that?), I guess that it is time to figure out exactly how I am going to pull this thing off. For starters, I am an impulsive person. Impulsivity, while it can be a wonderful trait in some instances (I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I know there has to be something good about it), will be my biggest hurdle to overcome in the next year. Let me paint you a scenario so that you can understand what I mean... I am out grocery shopping and as usual, I have brought a list of items that we need for the upcoming week. I walk through the door of the supermarket and my list magically disappears into my handbag... never to reappear again. I am sure that there are other people out there who can relate to this problem. I find myself intoxicated by the colorful displays and the 'on sale' signs. So much so that I lose all sense of what brought me into the store in the first place, and I regress into a senseless buying frenzy.

At night, sobered up from the shopping experience, I peruse all of my purchases - and I begin to realize that most of them were not on the list in the first place. Then, in order to justify the excessive spending to myself and my husband, I find myself repeating my spending mantra "But honey, this book/shirt/bowl/magazine/frame/etc. was so cheap that I couldn't afford NOT to buy it". My husband, god love him, often just rolls his eyes at me and the cycle continues.

Okay, now allow me to clarify something. I am not a 'shopaholic' by any stretch of the word, and we aren't in a 'money crunch' because of any of the spending that I have done in the past. So you might be asking yourself, why then would I want/need to make any changes at all? The answer is three-fold. As I have stated in my first blog: my goals are simple: 1) find personal well-being and fulfillment while living with less 'excess' 2) spend less money and 3) reduce the impact that I am having on the environment.

As an afterthought, I am also planning to use this blog as a sort of resource for those of you (especially people in the Edmonton area) who would like to find out more about consignment stores, recycling centres/rules, saving money in the kitchen, etc. Therefore, it is pertinent that I encourage your feedback, ideas, comments, and any other tips that you might have to make my journey more enlightened. As I mentioned, I have a group on facebook under 'MareBare Necessities' and an e-mail address set up for this as well: marebarenecessities@gmail.com Please feel free to forward this blog to anyone you feel would be interested and to comment on it. I will try to answer any mail/comments that I receive.

So, to kick off the tip sharing, here is a great web resource for helping you to use up leftovers in your kitchen:

http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/

Here you can enter in any food item that you need to use up in your kitchen and the site will provide you with a list of recipes to help you do just that! It is awesome.

Hope you enjoy!

MareBear

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