Day 22: the secret to happiness

One of the reasons that my kitchen gets out of control is that I'm always seeking happiness through purchasing. I find a recipe online that looks fabulous, buy the ingredients, feed it to my family. I see a product at the store, imagine their joy at me serving it up, buy it and take it home.

In these instances, my decision-making is coming from outside of myself. My purchases are being suggested to me. I am not looking at my own menu plan, my own routine, and choosing to adjust it, and then seeking out a means for doing so. The American economy thrives on encouraging us to purchase when we wouldn't normally choose to do so: "You deserve a new car!" "Now my family is getting good nutrition and we are enjoying mealtimes again [child enthusiastically hugs mom]." It would be nice if these sayings were simply implied, but these days, they are often stated straight up. The number of times they are implied probably approaches infinity.

My family has been watching TED talks lately, which are the PBS of the internet. Two of my favorites relate our variety of choices to a decline in happiness (Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice, and Dan Gilbert on synthetic happiness).

I tried to get my best friend to write this blog entry today, but she rolled her eyes--I shall try to offer you her perspective. Both she and my mom have begun shopping at Aldi. I've been before, but the store makes me cringe: it's crowded, there are so few options, I'm not familiar with it so I don't know what I'm doing, etc. But she loves it because she has one choice for salad dressing. If she needs ranch, there it is: one option. In Schwartz's TED talk, he mentioned that his grocery store carries 175 varieties of salad dressing.

Limited choices raise our contentment, and in fact, our happiness.

On the homefront, as we eat what we have, our choices are limited: there's still that package of fettuccini, the leftover tacos, a few ribs, some zucchini. If I were not on this campaign, dinner plans could look like this: what will we eat? Oh, there are five gazillion cool recipes on the internet. What can I buy? What should I do? Where can we go?

A menu plan always helps limit choices, limit those last minute decisions (which Schwartz says, lead to paralysis...how often have you given up planning dinner and gone out to eat? Nothing will eat up your budget faster than eating out). But when you are making the menu plan, aren't you still starting at the point of limitless possibilities?

This July, I am closing my eyes even further to what my culture offers me. If what I do at home consumes me less, I can give more to others who need a listening ear, a casserole for dinner, or a little help with their heating bill.