BURNT OFFERINGS

I will blame my hoarder self for not throwing those in the trash immediately. Surely they could be saved? Parts of them were edible? NO? No. NO!

Seriously. How can this even be a question? And still it was. I ended up having somebody else throw them away. At least they weren't around for more than 30 min.

THE PERSON BEHIND THE HOARDER

Remember how I once told you that hoarders are people, too? Now that you have grown to love hoarder me it is time to fall in love with the rest of my sparkling personality! 

On TV, hoarders often come across to me as people who don't have a grip on life. Who never do anything fun. Who have no hobbies, merely obsessions. They don't leave the house and people never come to visit them. I might be a hoarder and often act like one (reprogramming me is not done), but I see myself as a fun personality. I love a good party, I love cooking and having people over.

So here. Meet the real Katja, who is so much more fun than Hoarding-Katja. Yesterday we had friends over. 8 adults and 4 kids. We officially opened the barbecue and water fight season. It was delicious and so much fun! 

James loves tomatoes and Mozzarella and as I

love James, it is an absolute must have side

 dish when ever we fire up the grill!

For the vegetarians. (Slightly blurred.)

For me....gg

FREEZER MEALS

I finally confessed to Nicole about the blog. And her being mentioned. Her reaction:"Wow. I sound a lot more awesome than I am in real life." Well. She is just that awesome. She simply doesn't know.

She read the posts on meal plans and confessed to me that she hates left overs. She even left a comment on improvements of her system but google + liked it so much it simply gobbled it up.  So here we go.

As I just mentioned, Nicole hates leftovers. Especially on the second day. Might have to do with growing up in a household with little money, but that is pure speculation. She doesn't want to throw the leftovers away, either. Freezing it is a solution that is not pure genius, we all have done this, but her way of freezing the stuff is. She makes meal size portions and freezes them in individual containers.

No more providing after school snacks. The kids just grab a (home made) freezer meal and warm it up. As the leftover a portioned you don't end up with left over leftovers and of course one portion warms up a lot faster than a meal for 3.

Nicole says that a few days later, she doesn't mind the leftovers and might even have one of those meals for herself.

Now here is my 5 c on the topic. Why not have "freezer meal day" once a month. You know, those days when you've been running around all day running errands or taxiing kids back and forth, or when you haven't slept because half of the kids have been vomiting all night and the other half was whiney all day. So on that day everybody gets to pick what they want out of the freezer for dinner and all you do is pop it in the microwave one by one. Should also help with keeping your freezer from overflowing!

MEAL PLANS

I must admit, I am not far enough to actually execute this. But 2 friends of mine have and it works for them. A friend of mine, Nicole told me she has a meal plan worked out. She has enough dishes in her repertoire so she can go about 4 weeks without having to eat anything twice. (Wow, the lady is awesome!) She usually plans for a week. Writes down what she wants to cook and than plans her shopping list accordingly. She only buys what she needs for these meals. She says she will not necessarily cook on Monday what she wrote down for Monday she might be in the mood for Thursday's meal, but that is okay because she has several dishes to chose from, and nows she has all ingredients at home.

This means she does NOT

•  waste her time anymore doing quick trips to the store because she is out of something she needs for dinner. 
• spend hours in agony trying to come up with some plan for dinner with the stuff that's in her fridge
• buy random things that disappear in the fridge and pass their expiration date without ever getting used

Sounds like a win-win-win! to me!

So Nicole told me about it, and I shared it with a few women during a workshop I held on saving money and getting a grip on your finances. A friend of mine who attended it said:"That sounds good. I'll give it a try." A few weeks later she told me just how awesome it went. She said on Sunday night every family member gets to make a meal request for the week. (As there are 6 in the household it works rather well.) Monday morning she does her shopping. (She loves only having to go once a week.) She said not only are shopping and cooking easier, but she said because she doesn't just randomly throw stuff into her cart that looks good at the moment and gets tossed later, she saves between 10-20 a week. Not too bad, don't you think? That's 500-1000 a year. I know. Now you want to try it, too. Go ahead. My advice is free! ;) All of a sudden I am even more excited about executing the meal plan I have for this week!

HOARDING FOOD

I don't hoard food. But I can't throw anything away until it went bad. Even if it is just half a serving. Until it goes bad I have to keep it. Even if I know I don't want to eat it. I hope James will eat it. Of course he doesn't. Once it goes bad, it's out. But as long as it techically good still...different story. I have finally learned to not eat the left overs off  the kids plates.

When we go out to eat, I have to eat it all. Today we went to a fast food place. Fortunately I didn't order anything. The kids and James left enough for a whole meal.  I can't. I simply can't. I payed for it. The stuff was expensive. People starve every day. I simply can't throw it away.

I wonder if that has to do with my hoarding.