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Feb

21

The Simplicity Challenge - Day 4

Five days ago I wrote about how I will practice simplicity and extreme frugality for one month.

This is hard! But I’m just being whiny.

Quinoa Curry

Food

I am basically living on quinoa and pilaf until I run out, because they are my favorites in the grain family and I have a lot of both.

I wrote about how much difficulty I am having eating the food that I own, and this continues to be frustrating. I am finding myself avoiding eating altogether sometimes, so that I don’t have to think about it… as if eating isn’t an essential part of surviving as a human. This has got to stop. I need to go to the grocery store tomorrow - I was going to to today but I didn’t get to it with all my other errands. More avoidance. Must stop this.

I am going to get there though - the breaking point, where I start exploring the world of cooking and stuff I read a hilarious post by Erika today where she put my attitude toward cooking into the most perfect summary:

I started with a recipe that Caroline sent [...] I was skeptical. It looked like a lot of work! There were at least four steps! Four! That’s the kind of thing that makes my shoulders sag with despair, as a bowl of Rice Chex appears in an invisible thought balloon over my head.

*sigh* Yeah.
Hopefully all this food frugality and cooking will help me lose weight - my primary 2008 resolution. I’m not on the verge of being morbidly obese or anything, but I could use to lose some weight. JD at Get Fit Slowly pointed out some of his favorite “easy” ways to lose weight, one of them being eat 90% of your meals at home. Good advice. I sure eat a lot less total calories when I’m not tempted by 2000-calorie Thai dishes
As an aside, JD also made an excellent arguement against drinking diet soda, which I now drink almost daily. I wrote about this four years ago and I’m still drinking it. It’s easy to forget those things we used to profess. Fortunately for me, I won’t be allowed to re-stock on Diet Coke (NOW with VITAMINS and MINERALS lol! seriously?) for another month.

Closet

Clothing Purge

Today I pulled even more things from my closet to sell or give away. I have a frighteningly large pile to deal with now 8O. I carefully unpinned my blouse-in-progress from my dress-form and carried the pseudo-mannequin (hyphen overload!) into the bathroom where I have the best lighting. I then took pictures of every piece of clothing I am going to sell, front and back, and a detail shot with the macro lens to capture the accurate quality and color.

I was originally intending to list these items for sale on eBay tonight, but there is just no way. I have a lot of work ahead of me still, but I feel I must do it and so I will.

Once I’ve got the clothes out the door, I can start on the CDs and books. I was planning to sell everything on half.com but Lynnae posted a whole bunch of places to sell books online so I’d like to take a closer look at that before I move forward.

But let’s not trample past the beautiful clothes and forget about them! Not just yet, anyway. Oh, clothes. It is sad to see you go, but let’s be honest - I never wore you. Tragic.

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Filed Under money and finance, simple living

Comments

2 Responses to “The Simplicity Challenge - Day 4”

Lynnae @ Being Frugal.net on February 21st, 2008 6:26 am

I have the same problem with food. I’m trying to eat out of my pantry this week to save money and use up what I have, and every night it’s such a temptation to order out, because I don’t want to eat what’s in the house!
shanti on February 21st, 2008 12:23 pm

Why is it that we buy a pantry full of dry goods and then don’t want to eat them? It makes no sense. Did I buy them thinking maybe one day I’d start cooking and use all this stuff?

Actually, I know that you cook and I’m happy you are going through your pantry this week!