Cut the Crap Update

I’m not the world’s worst blogger, but I really should be better about regular entries, shouldn't I?  I’m not going to promise to be better.  I’ll do what I can.  Life has a way of leaving you a little breathless at times, and only now have I gotten the chance to breathe, let alone write.

I've changed jobs, so I've been busy.  However, I thought I needed to cut the crap and get out of a stressful situation while also growing my career.  It was needed.  It was time to move on.  One of the best reasons to change jobs is to gain a broader knowledge base.  I’m doing pretty much what I was doing before, only now I’m getting paid more.  AND I’m not dealing with as much uncertainty.  I’m also learning a lot about the hosting industry right at a time when cloud management is on the rise (ahem, it HAS been on the rise if anyone has been paying attention).  I wouldn't have learned this at my last job, so I’m thankful to be on the cutting edge. 

On the home front, we are still trying to simplify our lives.  It isn't more complicated since last I wrote, but it is more full.  My son will start homeschooling with his sister this summer.  We bought chickens and intend to go completely organic with our egg consumption (I’ll keep you posted on that).  We’re sifting through our old junk and hope to get rid of it one yard sale at a time.  We are having our house painted by an independent contractor.  He came highly recommended, but we chose him in part because we wanted to stimulate the local economy. 

So… we are making conscious choices to cut the crap and make a difference in small ways.  I’ll chronicle what I can, when I can.  Stay tuned…  

Does eating healthy cost more?

Last week we got a membership to Sam’s Club.  We had one before, and now that we again live within a reasonable distance from one, we decided to get another membership.

I like Sam’s as much as the next person.   It has a pretty good offering of things that you can’t get elsewhere, and the produce is great.  I also like their selection of meat.  I’m not necessarily seeing better food prices, though, so I’ve come to a dilemma.  As you know, I want to eat better.  I want my family to eat better.  You also know that we are on a tight budget.  All of that being said, do we dig into our budget so we can spend more money on better food?  

To some of you this is a no-brainer.  Of course we should spend money on food that’s better for us.  For me, though, dealing with a tight budget… what do I do?  In my experience fresh food is less costly than processed, preservative-laden food, but I’ve found contradictory articles on this.  This article states that calorie for calorie, healthy food costs more.  It also states that people with lower incomes are likely to be overweight for this reason.  However, THIS article in Shape Magazine says that you can avoid higher costs by simply following a few guidelines.  It also says there are no “bad” foods.  Hmmm… I think I need to chew on that a bit.  As you can guess, most of what I read fell into either of these two categories.  Didn’t help me much.  And I didn’t really see anything different coming from nutritionists or doctors.  I found that odd.    

Certified Organic food is more expensive.  Period.  I’ll leave that one alone, even though I’m going to try to move in that direction.  That’ll be fodder for another article.  

After all of that soul-searching, I’m hungry.  So I’m munching on some grapes.  And I’ve decided that I’m just going to go for it like I’ve wanted to all along.  I’ll let you know what my experiment produces.  In the meantime, let me know what YOU think.  Are healthy foods more costly?