What happens when a reformed food hoarder is faced with the Novel Coronavirus (COV-19) isolation requirements? I just got myself where I needed to be last month: only buying what I needed to last a week or a month depending on the item’s perishable condition. Now what?
Okay, to be fair, I did buy a HUGE thing of toilet paper this past week. Just like everyone else. In my defense, I buy the same package every year and I only buy it once a year. As I was down to only about 4-5 rolls, I naturally decided to pick up a package for 2020. So there is that.
But the rest is just awful. I have always hoarded food. Not because it’s that important to me, but because that is how I was taught. Being in a military family, we got paid once a month. My mother, like all the other dutiful Army wives, would go to the commissary on payday and buy enough food to feed a family of five for an entire month. Being the youngest, she always took me along.
So from a very early age, I can remember at least one shopping buggy overflowing the top of its wired-metal sides and sometimes two buggies. Why sometimes one and then sometimes two, I have no idea. I assume maybe that the two buggy months were ones in which we went camping? Maybe my sister knows and will comment below.
Just to note, not one of our family members were ever overweight while living at home. We got that way AFTER we left home. We were all painfully skinny growing up even with a fully stocked pantry.
Naturally, when I left home, I shopped like my mother. Filling the buggy with everything a five-person family would need for a month… but… um… it was only me. As an aside, I also only know how to cook for three people at a time.
Forty years later, I was still filling the buggy, but I found most everything I bought never got consumed. Most of it ended up in the garbage. A true waste of my hard-earned paycheck. So last month, I decided to crack down and train myself to purchase only what I needed to get through a week. (Toilet paper aside, of course!).
I got through THREE WHOLE WEEKS like this and was loving it. No longer did my refrigerator overflow with things I just wasn’t interested in eating or using to prepare meals. I started taking the time to cook the vegetables and rice alongside the meat (usually, it was only meat).
My pantry was almost empty when I went to the store. I was happy. So was my bank account. Enter Novel Coronavirus (COV-19)!! I went way overboard this past week. I have NEVER bought more than two packages of Splenda, ever. I now proudly own five large bags, and I’m still wondering… is that enough?
The good news? I can stay hunkered down in my RV for at least a month without having to go in search of food. Thanks, Mom.
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