Security

(a recent shopping trip)

We moved to the midwest exactly a year ago and one thing I’ve had to learn to get used to is the bugs. Sooo many bugs. I’m not really afraid of them, I just think they’re gross and I don’t appreciate sharing my house with them. Since we knew we would be gone several weeks we tried to prepare the house for the absence. I cleaned inside really well while Jared sprayed for bugs. (By the way, he is my hero for having sold door-to-door pest control in blazing hot southern California one summer to earn enough to pay cash for his Master’s program. Hardest summer of our lives but so worth it now that we look back.)

When we came home we were pleasantly surprised to find only a handful of dead bugs (lining the parameter of the house) and no roachfest. YAY.

But THEN. I was unpacking and I SCREAMED when I opened the pantry and discovered a furry little mouse friend had found it’s way in and made it’s home IN my stockpile.

Ok, there are a few things to say about this.

First, obviously, GROSS. Period. Food and mice, uh uh. (shaking head)

Second, I am TERRIFIED of mice. There aren’t many things that bother me. I even tend to be the spider-killer in our house (but don’t tell Jared I told you that). Rodents though–particularly mice are different for me. Ever since I was little they have given me the fast-heart beating creaps. My parents’ house is in the middle of a gorgeous piece of 5-acre land surrounded by thickly-wooded evergreen trees. One of the downsides is that there are plenty of critters that like to find a warm place to live in the winter. I remember times when I would lie in bed at night and hear the mice scurry behind the walls. It seemed my parents always had traps set to catch them. The problem that came for me is when I didn’t know where the traps were placed and I have way too many freaky childhood memories of opening a closet and finding a set-off trap or smelling a rancid stench and later figuring out it was a decaying mouse carcass somewhere behind the furniture. Yeah…nightmares from those experiences. Probably blown up bigger in my mind now, but anyway that’s how I remember it. It was a happy day when my family finally got a cat and I no longer had surprise rodent discoveries.

Just sayin’.

The house we live in now is next to a huge field and we’ve noticed that when the field is occassionally mowed there are a lot of bugs, toads, and furry friends that tend to relocate in our yard. Somehow one of the dang things made it’s way into the house, into the pantry and had made it’s nest right in my dark chocolate stash. Now if you know me I need my daily dose of chocolate, so it meant war. AND, also, get this–it chewed a hole in ALL my bags of dried beans and rice. Pretty ironic, right?

I was so terrified and disgusted by the whole situation that I made Jared do all the dirty work. He trapped the mouse (luckily it seems there was only one) and then started cleaning out and sanitizing.

I was quite emotional at this point because we’re talking about my pantry here, and I’ve been working pretty hard over the last year of couponing to build a decent stockpile. I have this slight panic in the back of my head that we need to have a good supply–a year’s worth even–of staples so that if we ever had an emergency we would be self-sufficiant in that area. It goes back to a few years ago when we lost a job and HAD to live on our storage for a while until we had another income. We continued to live comfortably on what was in the pantry and freezer for about a month and I was thankful we had what we had at the time. But now that I have discovered how financially POSSIBLE and EASY stockpiling is with coupons, I’ve been trying to build our supply to last (hopefully) a year. Just in case.

Anyway, I was pretty emotional about the loss of my stockpile as Jared was filling huge garbage bags of food the mouse had destroyed. Then as I was thinking about it I realized,

1. Because I’ve been couponing we literally paid pennies and nickles for most of the ruined items (and lots I even got free), so although it was depressing to throw away so much food, it wasn’t as if I was throwing away thousands of dollars I had spent (although it was probably worth that at regular retail price!) 
2. A quote from my mother-in-law ran through my mind: “It’s nice to have a plan. Know that the plan won’t always work and it really doesn’t matter.” It’s almost become a family joke because the statement is so true and helps bring perspective to so many situations.

So, I pulled it together, waited to be sure the mouse was gone, got out the Clorox wipes (which I got for free with coupons of course) and went to work.

Maybe the mouse invasion was actually a mixed blessing though because as we were cleaning out, throwing away, and reorginizing I realized a couple of things such as, Pam, just because you CAN buy mustard for $0.19 a bottle, doesn’t mean you REALLY need to buy 10 bottles! I mean really, what am I going to do with so much mustard?

Another thing I realized was that I’ve stockpiled a lot of things we haven’t used because I’ve been so obsessed with my 365 days of beans and rice challenge. When I originally gave myself the challenge the MAIN idea was to help me drop our food budget to $200 a month. I’ve successfully done that to a point that it’s now actually EASY for me to go to the grocery store and spend $30-40 for the week, and still buy PLENTY of food, if not more than I used to. I used to spend at least $85-100/week before I started couponing. So, with the loss of all my bags of beans and rice (which I will need to start replacing) and realizing that I had conquered my goal of dropping our grocery budget I decided to let the beans and rice challenge go. It was a tough decision for me since I hate to feel like a quitter and I know I could easily keep going with the challenge. At the same time I’ve been feeling a constant push over the past few months to cut out and simplify my life and so letting this challenge go is one of those things that needs to happen. I hope no one is terribly disappointed. I know I am, but I also know that I’m going to continue to cook on my $200/month budget, and that beans and rice will still play a big role in our menus, so it makes it okay to step down in my mind.

The THIRD thing I realized, kind of connected to the first two points is that I think I’ve become a bit of a food hoarder! I love to see my stockpile grow and hate to use things up because then *gasp* it would be gone! And having full pantry shelves definitely spells security for me. Luckily I can see (now that I’ve been faithfully couponing for a solid year) that coupons and sales go in cycles and that I don’t need to go overboard when I find a great mustard deal. I still need to be a good steward over what I have, otherwise I will end up throwing cereal crackers food away because I’ve had it on the shelf so long it’s terribly stale and expired.

So that’s that. Who knew a mouse in the house would be such an emotional thought-provoking experience for me? And this post makes me want to make a cute felt cat and mouse kit. . . .