Inside My Fridge

Looking inside my fridge is all the evidence you need to see I am not the best planner. If you’re having a party and you’d like me to cater it, then yes, I am a great planner; if we need to complete a big project with a deadline, I can do it, but what am I going to have for dinner tomorrow- I have no idea, and though at the moment I do have a decent amount of food in my fridge (which is unusual) that is mainly because I just smoked a lot of stuff experimenting with my new smoker.

I recently bought some really cool menu planning pages for my planner- yes I still use the kind of calendar you write in- and on one side are places to plan meals for the week, and on the flip side a place for a shopping list. It seemed like this was just what I’d need to plan better, eat better, and waste less food because I failed to consume it before it spoiled. I’ve had these sheets for about two months, and used one so far. Part of the problem is that what I think I’ll want this Tuesday, may not be what I actually want Tuesday, I have a hard time planning what I will feel like eating. And I hard time eating what I’m not in the mood for.

For some reason having a plan, even if I plan to eat something I really like, I feel like I’m on a diet. I guess planning feels like dieting, and dieting makes me want to rebel, and so planning makes me want to rebel, so I throw out more food than I care to think about. One solution of course is to shop daily, and for the fourteen years I worked in a grocery store, that is essentially what I did. It might be different if I had to plan meals for a family, but I only do that half the time, and the family is just two of us, so unlike some of my friends who keep an amazing amount of food on hand, I rarely do.

My intentions are good, but you know what they say about good intentions… I plan to plan, I mean to plan, I want to plan, but somehow I don’t plan, or I plan badly. It’s all pretty embarrassing! Even reading what I’ve written makes me annoyed at myself for talking about this like its a real problem. And yet, it feels like something I should fix. I sometimes think it’s because I’m alone so much, or come up with some other excuse, but it’s like all those years I claimed I was messy because I didn’t have enough space to put things away, and now that I have plenty of room I’m still messy! Can a messy person metamorphose into a neat one? Can a poor planner actually develop better planning skills? I have been eating my vegetables like I promised!

So, is the haphazardly stocked inside of my fridge like the inside of my head? My mom used to say that my messy room was an indication of my messy mind. If I put a more conscious effort- a more mindful approach into shopping, and planning and filling my fridge, will that create a more structured mind space for me? Will my whole house get neater? Will I be a kinder, gentler person? Who knows what potential I could unlock by planning my meals for the week? At this very moment, I am sitting next to some menu planning sheets, and as soon as I wrap this post up, and proof read it, I will give it a try. As with all the resolutions I share here, stay tuned!