Just Buy The Snacks
Make room for snacks.
Grocery shopping frugally is a skill I’ve cultivated over the years, only because the idea of dropping a lot of money on food, of all things, feels silly to me. I love grocery shopping. Going to the grocery store on a Sunday morning is a ritual that, if not completed, will throw off my entire week. Making food on Sunday for the week means I won’t end up eating takeout and substituting Pocky and seltzer for actual dinner. It’s a grounding mechanism more than anything else — make the food, eat the food the rest of the week, don’t spend money, prosper.
One of my dumbest points of pride is never spending that much money on groceries in the first place. If I can feed myself for $35 a week, then I’ve beat my own personal record. This works out for the most part, but it really does leave me with the bare minimum.
I never have any snacks in the house. I don’t buy snacks. Often, usually around 2 P.M. or so, I could really, really use one.
The snacks I would buy are the kind of stuff I’d eat in one fell swoop, plopped in front of the TV on my third hour of a Say Yes to the Dress marathon. I know myself well enough to not buy cookies; chips are fine but will certainly disappear in two days. Snacks that require any sort of preparation — your ants on a log and your apples smeared with almond butter — are fine, but its the preparation that drives me bonkers. When I want a snack, I want it to be ready for me to eat right then and now. A snack is convenience. A snack is also delicious, and shouldn’t require me to turn on an oven or activate the stove. I should be able to amble into the kitchen, get the snack, eat the snack, and return to my work.
There’s nothing really preventing me from buying snacks except for the feeling that I’ll be essentially wasting money if I do so. Knowing what I know about my habits, if I add some stuff into my weekly grocery shopping that fits into this category, I’ll eat it all in the first few days, enamored by the novelty of having something in my house to eat that doesn’t need to be prepared. I’ll have many snacks by Sunday, but on Wednesday, they’ll all be gone. Then I’ll have to go get more snacks, eat them, spend more money and repeat: a cycle that will certainly end with me selling all of my possessions to make rent because I’ve spent all my discretionary income on snacks.
I’m experimenting with an apple and cheese on toast strategy for the moment — easy enough to make, not that expensive and vaguely satisfying — a healthy gesture towards snacking So far, it’s working out. Next week, I’ll buy snacks.
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