Once I was nearing retirement, I warned my partner I was taking a week or two off from everything. For the record, he was perfectly fine with it but once the grandkids and daughter returned home, life got busy again and I didn’t take the time off.
Fast forward a month, give or take, and I knew it was time. I’d been deep in the kitchen and garden, doing everything I was supposed to be doing.
Then? Not so much. It was the onions that finally did it. I found a large bag of onion scraps in one of my freezers and wondered what experiment I had been planning. Shrug. I dehydrated them all and made onion salt since I had plenty of onion powder already, but the process took far longer than I thought. That was it. I was done for a week at least.
I decided to spend the next week doing whatever the heck I wanted, minus an eye appointment and daily watering of the garden of course. I had a slew of frugal decorating and crafting projects that had been languishing, so I have been tackling those at my leisure.
Sometimes the mental load of keeping on top of everything, ensuring that my home is as near to zero waste as possible, sticking to a frugal lifestyle and budget, it takes its toll. I am forever trying to find solutions and ways to reduce, recycle and reuse not just in the kitchen but in my entire home. As I said, it can be mentally draining at times.
As an aside, there are plenty of meals in the freezer for my perfectly capable partner to prepare. I know he won’t starve. As a former first responder, he is actually a very capable cook, he just prefers my cooking over his own and being that cooking is my love language, I am usually very happy to oblige.
But this week I am taking my time to do whatever I fancy and to take in the moments of inspiration for more frugal ideas by whatever happens to come to me.
Sometimes, you just need to take a step back in order to move forward.
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the house behind 