Sitting here sick in bed with my sick 2.8 year old next to me I was flipping through the pages of a popular domesticated magazine and suddenly I found myself getting really snide. Here are some samples of my thoughts, " someone got paid to come up with that?" Scoff... "Is this information actually blowing someone's mind? SMH. I can do that. Silly!
Light BULB! (reminder to myself I need to replace at least 5 around my house)
Before I stayed at home, I worked and then came home frazzled to 4 kids. I was exhausted, and in need of dinner ideas or simple projects to destressify. The ideas in the magazine were mind blowing to me. And the ideas in the spread had pictures with colorful, large font titles so I didn't have to read about it. The magazine saved my life because I didn't have to come up with ideas myself, they were presented to me for a simple 3.99 a month! I even created a smash book just to catalogue all the mind blowing pics!
I'm on year 2 staying at home, and the smash book has been annihilated. What I could afford to do around my house I did, and I went through those smash book ideas like they were lemonade on a hot day. Hence I find myself bored with the lack of originality in the magazines because I really try to live a simple, resourceful life now that I am able to stay home. I have the time, energy, and the motivation to be creative again. I am always looking for ways to cut corners or squeeze every ounce of use out of whatever is in my house. For many women, this is not second nature, this is more like a chore or better yet an annoyance.
Well let me first apologize for being so annoying up front. My apologies.
Here is why resourcefulness is so important to me: I want to be a producer not a consumer, I want to survive the zombie apocalypse because my son and husband have a bet that I wouldn't survive a week. Truly, I feel that using all of my resources to the best of my abilities is honoring God in the smallest of things. I have traveled around the world and have seen enough poverty to know what true waste is. Garbage heaps are even useful to some people around the world, so I take throwing things away a bit personally. Crazy, I know, but it's a real heart conviction for me.
So in turn I thought I'd share some of the ways that I turn everyday clutter, and crap around my household into useful crap.
Resourcefulness:
I have the best neighbors in the world and they give me boxes of crazy flavored crackers and cookies all the time because their son works for this food company. So he gives them test boxes of things and they don't eat them, and give them to me because I have 4 kids and always look desperate.
The other cold day I realized that I had had some unopened rosemary cracker and some caramelized onion crackers sitting in my pantry for over 3 months now. I don't care about expirations dates, but the unopened boxes were bothering me. The holiday had past, and here they still were, lonely. Forgotten.
Light Buld!
I took each box and ground them up, stuck them in a Ziplocs, labeled them, and threw them into the freezer. Now they are ready-made breading for my baked/friend chicken. Flavored bread crumbs are $2 at the store for half of what I just smashed up. I'm brilliant.
I also do this with stale cookies, homemade or store bought. They make for a great pie crust or dessert toppings.
Is this mind blowing? Perhaps not, but with a culture that is more consumer than producer why not make your old dressings in your fridge into marinades, or your old sheets into tents for the kids to play with or paint drops during project time. Everything has a second use!
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