Who the fuck would want to eat out of that fridge?

So, I did it. I slayed the grocery monster, and somehow got out of Lowe’s for only $122, alcohol included.

I did it with a list. For the first time in years, perhaps, I actually made a grocery list.  Using the online shopping feature on Harris Teeter and Lowe’s, I carefully curated a list that included coconut flour, vanilla extract, unsalted butter, and fresh greens.

Then I laughed, deleted all of those items, and actually tried to put together groceries I could live off for a month.

Whenever I’ve heard the words “grocery” and “budget”, I’ve panicked. I’ve took a mental inventory of all the meals I would have to prep. The skills those meals would require. Any fresh fruit and vegetables would need to be used before they spoiled. I’d have to invest in basic ingredients like flour, baking powder, buttermilk, etc., you know, to get more out of my groceries.

For baking fresh biscuits and shit.

Isn’t that how you save money?

No, it’s not. At least, not always. Don’t get me wrong, I cook a mean fucking biscuit, but part of the reason I’m in this mess is because I’m used to groceries being easy. Pressuring myself to make waffles from scratch every morning, or force feeding myself fresh vegetables for three days straight will make this budgeting thing even more abysmal than it is.

So I deleted any ingredient that required skill, and went back to basics. You can check out everything I bought here, but essentially, I got a lot of brown rice, eggs, chicken thighs, a loaf of wheat bread, some avocados, and some frozen raspberries.

There’s more, I promise.

My only splurges was a container of honey (I was out), 1/3 lb of prosciutto, coconut LaCroix, and a $6 bottle of Rose. But otherwise, I was good. I tried to be considerate of poor, miserable, starving Melissa we’ll all meet at the end of April. I also bought some ramen and some Annie’s mac and cheese because I’m not perfect, and being frugal kind of really sucks.

Anyhoo, I got home from my grocery adventure, and started to put my groceries away when I was greeted with…

 

 

…my gross fridge.

My friends and I joke about my fridge. I mean, look at that. It’s mostly empty, and when it does contain items, they’re either expired, or empty. In that skanky fridge alone, I had two containers of expired hummus, an empty can of whipped cream, an open can of green olives (from yesterday, not bad), an empty BOX that once contained delicious bubbly water, two jars that once held wonderful jams, AND a Tupperware container that didn’t belong to me.

As I looked through the sticky shelves, a thought emerged:

Who the fuck would want to eat from this fridge?

My bank account has the answer. Not me.

I realize now that although I have this big, beautiful, kitchen, I never want to eat in it. And why would I? Opening up your fridge, and being greeted with this nasty shit is not motivating. At all.

So before I put anything in the fridge, I cleaned it. I listened to old school Taylor Swift, and scrubbed every single shelf. I threw away old food and washed out containers. I gagged over expiration dates that were from December. But I persisted.

And you know what? While going through things, a few surprises.

A sunny bottle of OJ my friend Katie had left in there earlier. An unopened, unspoiled package of zucchini noodles. A few beers that were left behind from a dinner I had a few weeks ago. A sad, unopened frozen bag of blueberries.

(Also guys, I don’t think Taylor Swift is okay.)

When I finally cleaned it out, it looked like this:

 

 

Uh, hell yes I want to eat fresh prosciutto and mozzarella. I want to crack open one of those Sour Monkeys and think about love, and life, and poetry, and –

See, look at that. 

It never really occurred to me, but…. maybe if I take care of my fridge, it’ll take care of me. Maybe if I treat my kitchen like a space I want to be creative in, I’ll be creative in it. There’s a lot of food for thought here (pun intended, assholes), and it’ll take longer to unpack than my six or seven bags of groceries did.

But anyway, my point is this. This adventure in frugality is already making me realize that money isn’t the only thing I spend too much. Time. I don’t spend my time well. If I invested 30 or 40 minutes a week in cleaning my kitchen, and making my fridge a welcoming place (weird, right?), maybe I wouldn’t be spending $250 a month at fucking Whole Foods.

Just an idea. I’ll keep you posted. 

But for now, I’m going to think more about how I can make my kitchen/eating area more inviting for Mr. Morris and I. We already had a lovely evening of drinking tea, washing dishes, and jamming to Tay Tay.

(Taylor, please get help.)