Month Two… Food

Yikes. Month two is HARD. On our menu are seven food items: chicken, spinach, apples, green beans, whole wheat bread, potatoes and eggs. Milk is free (yahoo!). 

Its really hard to give up the luxury of condiments. Yes, I'll have grilled chicken… with BBQ sauce. How did we grow so accustomed to excess in this area? I cannot fathom eating only rice for a day… much less a week… much less my whole life. And yet. 

There are so many places in the world that have nothing. They are LUCKY, BLESSED by a single bowl of rice, or some bean concoction. Why do I "need" more? Why am I addicted to spices and toppings and sauces and condiments? 

This has been such a struggle, and we are only on day four. I can handle eggs for breakfast. Toast is fine (no jelly or peanut butter!?!). Apples are a life saver. Potatoes are good (no sour cream?!). But plain chicken? Plain spinach? 

I have a spice cupboard with at least 100 items it in. My fridge and pantry combine for at least 40 mixes/toppings/condiments. Ugh. All of it screaming my name - and all of it making me sick when I realize just how spoiled I am - how blessed I am, and I take it for granted every day.

Oh, Lord, that you would use this season to open my eyes to the needs of others - where I have excess that I might be able to share with someone who has none. Help me remember to pray for those who are hungry rather than complaining about what I have to eat. May I never again mumble "I'm not in the mood for that" and grumble about whats in the (FULL) cupboards. Help me to stop splurging on foods, to stop the addiction to these things, and instead increase my addiction to you. May you be my desire, not cookie dough or whatever other craving hits me in the moment.

PS - this month our kids are supposed to be avoiding processed foods (no eating out, etc). Steve went shopping last night and came home with a super-sized bag of fruity dyno-bites. So that's awesome. (puke)

When it feels like we're failing...

So our month of doing seven things to make our lives greener is almost over. Bleh. That about sums up how I feel about it. I don't mean to make light of the situation at all, but it didn't really have the outcome I was hoping for. What was I hoping for - I don't even know I suppose.
I think the disappointment over how impossible it is to be all-out green in a tiny midwest community is holding a gray cloud over the month's experiment. Amanda and I were at the "local" grocery store and buying steaks - the "local" (from 4 hours away) beef was 2-3x the price of the regular meat! I cannot pay $12 for a pack of "local" hotdogs or pound of ground beef!
And yes, I know that there are semi-local cattle farms in the area that I could purchase a cow from - and plan to do that yet, but not this month. And yes, we have a whole foods store, but that does not equate to local. We are buying local produce, and even got bags of local sweet corn to bag and freeze. Otherwise, its just buying from USA instead of other countries and that has to be enough - though come winter, I don't know how that will pan out either.
But, we are recycling what our little town will take, and we are using our compost bin. And honestly, I just need to waste less food, because even though we compost it, I hate that there is food just being thrown out!
I am not feeling like this month has thus far led to earth-shattering heart change, and I think I was expecting that. My eyes are open and the hunger is there - I just haven't found the whatever-it-is that will satisfy the itch.

Ok. My garbage smells completely vile, but I'm refusing to take it out since it's only half full. Sometimes this no-waste thing just stinks. Bad pun intended.

;)

Amanda

This is harder than I thought...

It turns out that buying food locally is difficult when you live in a small town. And as such, I have been avoiding our monthly shopping trip, and the result is a lot of "local" eating out. We have a few restaurants in town that are not national chains (enter my new favorite, the Viking). I am also claiming Zorbaz as (fairly) local. Local food is expensive. Or rare. Even my favorite produce stand is not actually local (dang it Country Stop!). There is a "whole foods" type of store in town, but the prices and selection are not really practical for a family. My dear husband, who hates what he has labeled "Tree Hugger Month", argues that Service Food is technically local since its not a wal-mart scale chain. He proudly announced that he had bought the kids a local meal…. of Kraft macaroni, Banquet chicken nuggets, etc… but they were local! HA - not quite my dear. I think to function as a "local" buying family, we definitely can't afford to be stringent on this rule long-term. I like the idea of buying whole foods, produce from local vendors (but I LOVE the country stop!), and even meat can be purchased locally - but it will/would drastically change our monthly food budget, and our menu, etc. Perhaps what would be practical in the long-term would be to look for items that are as close to local as possible - and also to touch base with local farms about certain items. I counted Cass Clay milk as "local" - but even that is much more expensive than the Holiday brand, and when your family goes through a whole cow's worth in a day, it adds up fast.
He scrambled to find any and all garbage in the house on July 31 so that he could avoid having to sort it out the next day when we began recycling. And we couldn't find recycling bins prior to the month starting (still haven't ordered them!), so our recycling is currently happening in paper bags in the kitchen amongst the totes that have yet to be unpacked. Classy. And here again, I don't know how this is going to play out. Yes, we are sorting out EVERYTHING. But our town doesn't recycle EVERYTHING. So is it a waste of time? Steve concluded that we will just burn what they won't accept. Hmm.. And I refuse to sort the bathroom garbage. Yes, wipes or paper is easy to sort - but feminine products? I'm not dealing with that. And the idea of touching other people's kleenex grosses me out too. We'll see what Steve decides tonight when its garbage time :) We have been using the compost bin. Luckily, the previous owners of the house had the bin and had it going, so we are just adding to it and hoping for the best. I do like that food isn't ending up being left in the sink, but I think we are getting better (or attempting to get better) at better portioning. Its hard with kids - some days they will eat ten bites and sometimes they will eat none. Makes it difficult :) But I think the composting idea is something that we could easily continue (if it works!).
The easiest thing (?) should be using less energy. I am ramping up my role as the energy police, and its definitely drawing my attention to how much we WASTE. The other night, Steve went out - and I initially left on three lights, and then sat down with the Xbox and TV turned on while I was using the laptop. I wasn't using the TV - just left it on waiting for me to use it. And I definitely didn't need the kitchen and hall lights on. But I was almost instantly aware of it - and got up and shut things off. Boy does this old house get dark with no lights on! I have also been trying to teach the kids that they don't need lights on during the day. For the most part, these rooms have TONS of window light - and turning the light on actually doesn't make any difference anyway. We have turned the thermostat warmer so the A/C isn't working as hard (couldn't bring myself to shut it off - can't sleep with it as it is, poor me, right?!). I had to break the rules when we refinished the attic floors last week - A/C and fans had to be on! But other than that, its been okay. We are not, however, succeeding at using only one car. While I have used the stroller with the kids a bit, we've been at the lake during these high-fume days at our house last week, and it didn't save on energy/emissions to have steve drive us out there and then go back to work only to come back to get us and bring us home. Plus, as he contends, the van gets less MPG than the car, so it makes it less practical. This next week, we will definitely have to kick up our efforts here.
Overall, I think the first week has been a semi-success. I will openly admit that I was not all that concerned with my trash or my footprint on the earth prior to this experiment. It's all too easy to say that it's something someone else can figure out. The reality is that Our Creator spent 5 amazing days putting together this beautiful place - to reflect His glory. As the author points out, we put so much effort into taking care of ourselves, but yet ignore how we treat everything else God Created. Yep, that's me. I don't think I will turn into a preachy, "tree-hugger"(Steve!), but I pray that I will continue to be more aware of my role as a care-taker.

Here we are, the beginning of month 1!!!
The rules:
1. Buy local food
2. Recycle EVERYTHING
3. Shop thrift/second hand
4. Tami is learning how to compost. Not so much an option in my apartment building, but I will be focusing on not throwing away any leftovers!
5. Conserve energy/water
6. Tami's family will be driving only one car. I will be combining all of my errands to one trip per week.
7. Repurpose instead of buying new

Today seems to so far be fairly successful! Spent the day enjoying the lake, and now having a dinner of locally caught deer :) and corn we bought from a farm down the road. I'm debating whether the bacon is alright?! Turns out it's from Missouri.... Boo. I may be sneaking it in anyway until I get a chance to buy some more groceries. Feel free to share your thoughts. :)

-Amanda

Getting close!

We’re coming up close to our go-live date and I think I’m having mixed feelings about this journey :) When first reading the book, I knew this was something I was feeling the urge to do, something I needed to jump into! And overall, I’m extremely excited. I’m definitely feeling the need to get rid of the clutter in my life – both physically and spiritually, as this experiment lends to. I also am anticipating, though, that this will leave things wide open to pinpoint areas of hypocrisy in my life – spots where I believe in the importance of these things, but continue to turn the other way and leave it for someone else to handle. So I think it’s going to be an adventure. A necessary and very interesting one! So my prayer (and I’ll take any and all offers of prayer on our behalf for those following our journey!) at this point is that these changes make a lasting impact on our lives, continuing past even the end of month 7.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” – Matthew 6:19-21

-Amanda

Side note: Just started doing some research, and found several sites about where one can buy local/organic/join csa's/etc in Fargo. Yay!

"A deeply reduced life to find a greatly increased God"

(The title is a quote from Jen Hatmaker, the author of the life-changing book, "7".)

This spring I was feeling the itch. You know the feeling - things in life start feeling unsettled, or you start to get restless. Something was missing, or perhaps there was too much surrounding me. I happened upon this book via a friend who was going through it as a Bible study with her friends over the summer. I was instantly drawn to the concept of getting rid of all of this excess in my life so that I can find God - more of Him, less of this world. I almost instantly told my cousin and fellow crazy reader about it and we decided we would do the adventure together. We both read the book and then texted each other similar messages: "We need to do this NOW". And thus, the blog you are reading. Check out the author's blog for the background of her experiment.


Over the course of seven months, we will be excavating our lives - each month has a different focus aimed at helping us clear out the clutter both physically and spiritually. As we sat together mapping this out, it dawned on me that some of these months are going to be HARD, and some probably just hard - but all are things I am eager to do and I am antsy for our "go-live" date of 8/1. We will each be blogging here - a journal of sorts for our own venting/sharing, but also to share with you all about this journey. And while we have rearranged the order of the months, we will be sticking to the areas of life which are mentioned specifically in the book, and adhering to the experiment almost exactly as the author did. Here is the run down:


Month One: Waste - adopting seven habits for a greener life
Month Two: Food - eating only seven foods for a month
Month Three: Clothes - wearing seven pieces of clothing for a month
Month Four: Possessions - giving away seven things a day for a month
Month Five: Spending - Limiting where we spend to only seven places. (we are making this one more strict because we didn't feel too limited by that - details to come)
Month Six: Media - turning off seven sources of media for a month
Month Seven: Stress - Observing the Sabbath and practicing Seven Sacred Pauses


By default, my husband Steve is going to be joining us in this craziness. We have decided, however, that my kids will not be partaking to the same extent. They will eat more than seven foods - but we will limit them to whole foods/no eating out. They could probably participate in most of the other months though - I am excited to get them into the process of giving things away and honoring the Sabbath. And OH, those seven pauses! I cannot wait for month Seven!


If you haven't read the book, I cannot recommend it enough. Her writing is humorous (the laugh-out-loud kind), but the message cuts straight to the heart. For example, a group of friends supported her during this process by doing variations of her experiment. During the month of food, for example, her friends focused on a different country of the world each week and ate only what they had to eat - some were just rice and beans - and then pray for that country. It amazes me to think that I have NEVER eaten plain rice. Never. I always have a condiment (or two), or meat and veggies and sauce of some kind on it. Millions of people in this world eat only rice. If they are lucky they get it for more than one meal a day. I am thinking I am going to incorporate a day of rice into that month to further hit home this idea. Why am I complaining that my new house has a fridge that doesn't have room for my 20 condiment bottles? TOO MUCH STUFF.


At any rate, I am excited for this adventure. I cannot wait to share it with you all - the highs and lows. I cannot wait to see what I learn and how God moves during this time in our lives. I need to learn how to compost! Yikes! As we start each month we will fill you in more on the theme for the month and how that applies to our spiritual journey as well. Oh my goodness I am excited. If any of you want to join us - jump in! Both feet! It is a lendable nook book :) But either way, I beg of you to read the book. SO life-altering. And sometimes life needs a little earthquaking. 


Tami