When I was a kid, almost everything we ate was made from scratch. Of course we had store bought crackers and other snacks, but for the most part all of our actual meals were made from fresh foods. Since it was always that way at our house I really didn’t think about how awesome that was. Thinking back, I remember having friends over for dinner and them thinking that we always had fancy meals. I thought it was weird that they would think chicken, mashed potatoes, and mixed veggies was something special. I’ve now come to realize that people don’t always eat that way, it takes a little extra work to eat real food.

It wasn’t until I got married that I discovered the endless variety of packaged foods. I honestly didn’t know that you could buy pre-made hamburger patties (Dad always made his own recipe), and that the produce section sold apples already cut up in a bag for you. I thought my discoveries were absolutely fantastic. I thought my parents were silly for wasting so much time preparing their own food. I’ve just recently found out that cutting up my own apple really isn’t all that difficult.

When we were first married, both of us were working a lot of hours and there simply was no time for meal prep. We are very fortunate in that I now stay home and have the time and energy for cooking, and I’m really beginning to enjoy it. I’ve had a total shift in what I consider to be an easy meal to prepare. At this time last year, we were having hamburger helper (or something similar) at least once a week. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there is necessarily anything wrong with that. We still buy it for Jesse to have for lunch sometimes, but those types of food don’t happen too often in our house anymore. In looking through my old cooking magazines, I’ve founds dozens of recipes that I completely skipped over before because they were too much effort. Now I can’t wait to try new ingredients and just see what happens.

I have a theory that eating all of these overly processed foods the last couple of years may be what provoked all of my allergy issue to develop. I think it was just a huge shock to my system after never eating foods like that before. My body didn’t know what to do, so it starting attacking everything. It’s amazing how much of a difference it has made in how I feel. The other day, I just had to tell Mom how great it was that she fed us real food as kids. She agreed that it is worth the little bit of extra effort and that real food rocks!

I’ve decided that we are officially DONE with cold weather.  Yesterday I started the dreaded task of removing our thick sweaters and long sleeve shirts from our closet.  I’m so glad they’re gone, I’m sick of feeling bundled up and claustrophobic… we are ready for Spring!

I had to warn Jesse that he should just avoid our bedroom for a while. He doesn’t do well with seeing the chaos that happens during a project. Which is actually pretty funny considering how messy he was when we first met. He was sharing a two bedroom condo with a guy we knew from church. The first time I saw his room there was a pathway from the door to his bed, and from his bed to his computer. The rest of the floor was covered in about two feet of stuff (I’m not allowed to say junk). That’s not to say my old bedroom was always that clean, but it sure wasn’t that bad. Now Jesse often gets annoyed about messes before I do, and he can’t stand it that messes often have to get worse before they can get better. I’m not sure how it happened, but his OCD has come out a bit when it comes to neatness.

Since I was already making a mess of our entire bedroom, I figured I might as well go through the closet for clothes I don’t wear anymore.  I’ve lost a bit of weight since being on my allergy diet and had a lot of stuff that I know I can’t wear that was just taking up space.  There is nothing like shopping for new outfits in your own closet… I forgot about some of the things hiding in there!  I think there will need to be a shopping trip in the near future to refill the empty spaces.

Of course, once you clean out one closet it just makes the other closets seem that much messier. Where does all this junk come from? How do we end up with so much stuff anyways? I guess the next step will be to see what other treasures I have forgotten about.