Simple Living: Avoid Convenience Items
How much would you pay for convenience?
How much DO you pay for convenience?
Fast food restaurants. ATMs. In and out grocery stores. Drive-up coffee shops. Our culture is filled with countless convenience options. Just drive town any town street and you will see convenience thrown at you, from all over.
I would say the one item that we are willing to pay for the most when it comes to convenience is food.
Think about all of the fast food restaurants we have. Chain and non-chain restaurants. Have you ever walked through the grocery store aisles and noticed how many packaged convenience foods there are?
The only thing is, it is easy to forget about how much convenience foods cost.
How much are you willing to pay for convenience? School lunches can often be the biggest cause for over-paying for items such as these. Think about snack-size packs, like crackers, fruit snacks, chips, etc. How about juice boxes? Lunchables? Even paper bags and baggies. What are you willing to pay, just to make something convenient?
The biggest argument for buying convenience foods is that it saves so much time. But what about the time it takes to make the money to purchase these foods? The time to find a place to store all of them? The space that they take up in your home? In the end, does it REALLY save that much time?
It may take a little more prep in the beginning, but what about packing healthier snacks for your family such as apples or crackers and peanut butter, hummus with crackers or vegetables, or even buying a large container of yogurt and putting them into snack-size containers? Then when it comes to meals, instead of stopping at the closest fast-food restaurant, choose to double your recipes so that you can eat one and freeze the other. Choose to keep the necessary staples in your home so that when last minute meals happen (as they do to everyone), you will be prepared.
Are convenience foods everything they say they are?
