Thursday, February 17, 2011

the plan

Here it is folks, the day you've been waiting for. The Plan emerges... but first, let me put some stuff out there.

I have some things going for, as well as against, me in this whole journey and I'd like to share them so we can all get a better idea as to where I'm coming from.
The Stats: Pros
- I currently live in Portland. Portland is to the localism/sustainable/organic/CSA/"being personally acquainted with your food" movements as San Francisco is to gay folks. In other words, it's a mecca. It's absurdly easy to not just find organic food but pretty much anything that would fall under the category of "out of the loop".
- I'm a college educated, white woman who comes from an upper-middle class family. Food is a socio-economic topic and I have the benefit of background, education, and slight economic freedom to make certain choices than if I were in a different class.
- I don't have any kids. This is a pro in this particular case. I very much would like to have children someday, but I have to admit this whole project is going to be a heck of a lot easier seeing as how the only other mouths my partner and I have to feed are a chubby fish and a demanding cat.
- My family are organic farmers so I'm in the "know", as it were.

The Stats: Cons
- I don't have a lot of money. I work part time for slightly more than minimum wage and I'm also a student who is racking up loan debt like nobody's business.. My bank account balances are generally more laughable than laudable. Basically, there is some wiggle room, but hardly enough to write home about. The reason that this matters is that organic, ecologically consciously made or grown products are generally more expensive than their generic, conventionally made or grown products.
- Like I mentioned in my first post, I can be lazy. Convenience is a powerful draw and doing what is right does not often overlap with what is convenient.


So with that out of the way, here's The Plan. It's simple really and I look at this more as the foundation for how I want to live out the rest of my life. These are the basic steps that we'll build on and remodel as we go along.
(1) Stop buying from box stores like Target, Kohls, Wal Mart, etc, as well as stop supporting huge manufactures like Nike, and Gap (and the sister stores like Old Navy and Banana Republic).  If I need to buy new clothes, I plan on finding clothing made in the US or buying from local thrift shops so that my dollars don't go to directly the giant companies but rather local businesses. Underwear could be tricky...
(2) Food= all organic, all the time. We will know what we're eating, what's in it, and hopefully were it came from. No more fast food (not a big sacrifice for us at all) and cut out the processed foods/ingredients. Succinctly: locally grown kale is in, Doritos are out.
(3) Reducing our waste. We throw a lot of stuff away. We recycle everything we can and yet our kitchen trash bag still fills up surprisingly quickly. Ideally I'll get one of those super awesome vermiculture bins (yay worms!) and get rid of our food waste that way instead of tossing it.

Ok friends, lunch break is over. More elaboration later!

2 comments:

  1. You could just stop wearing underwear.

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  2. Admirable! I can't say I could do it. Actually I'm pretty sure I couldn't. I do my best, recycle everything curbside will take, compost my food waste, I even have a guy I found on Craigslist who will take and recycle plastic food bags (cereal box inserts, frozen food bags, produce bags, etc.) for me. I love BUYING fresh food... it just never gets eaten. We love making shnitzel and the other day I just discovered two lonely rotten pork chops in the bottom drawer of the fridge. The only thing I manage to get through is a bag of potatoes. Maybe this will change as my diet progresses, maybe I will just waste more food. But I start my garden next month! Good luck to us!

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