The other day, if you had walked into my kitchen, you would have seen me having a conversation with my deceased grandfather while leaning over the garbage disposal.
You see, my whole life I’ve heard stories about my grandfather who I had never met. Not that he was a hoarder or a miser, just a man super committed to “waste not, want not.”
So the other day when a handful of grape tomatoes accidentally went down into the garbage disposal, and I felt tempted to pull them out… I took some time to stop and evaluate.
“Grandpa Sylwester,” I whispered, as I stared down at the good food just inches from rescue. “I’m really sorry that you lived during the Great Depression. I’m really sorry that you didn’t have much food to eat and that you had to cut open the toothpaste as you waited for the next paycheck to come. I don’t live in that world now. I don’t like to waste things, but I also can’t obsess over getting my money’s worth of each little purchase. That would be WASTING my energy and time! So, thank you for teaching my family frugality, but I don’t think I can feed my kids these tomatoes. I hope that doesn’t dishonor you in any way.”
Now, I am in no way advocating for waste (I’m a fan of savethefood.com), but rather explaining how I’ve had to reconcile my extreme ways. When my desire to not waste food come into conflict with serving my family, then I have encountered problems.
Colby and I were discussing this issue (For the 65,394th time) and he spoke some insight into this struggle “Your obsession with not wasting a morsel isn’t a godly thing when it causes you to undervalue the person.” I agreed with him and, almost immediately, I felt a 2-decade-long burden lift. It was okay to throw away some leftovers if our family was sick of eating it. It was okay to waste a little meat instead of angrily suggesting Colby and I eat it.
I have no idea if this is applicable to anyone else out there, but this whole issue of waste has really been one I’ve been thinking about lately. So, I thought would blog about it! Can ANYONE out there relate in anyway? What was your family like growing up? Did you mom drink your leftover cereal milk so that none was wasted? What do you do when your kids won’t eat their food? Get mad? Eat it yourself? Throw?
