Resource Management
If you play video games, you’ve probably encountered resource management games. The point of these puzzles is that you have a variable that limits what you can do. So, for instance, in Zork, you have a lantern. It has limited light that diminishes with each turn. So you have to plot out your time in dark places because you don’t want to waste the lantern while you’re up in the forest and can see without artificial light.
Or you have food that gets used up by the player character or a limited number of items that be carried (and all other items need to be stored someplace central and safe). The point is that some people love these types of limits and some people hate these types of limits. Once upon a time, I was in that former category. I thought those limits made the game more exciting.
But now my life is one long resource management game.
Josh goes shopping every two weeks. Which means that days ahead of time, everyone chooses meals for the next two weeks. Then I create a PDF of all the recipes and use it to plan out the shopping list. Because he goes food shopping for two other households, I have to get their lists and meld them with our list, and then put the whole thing in order by section and aisle so Josh can walk through and see everything in order. Then we have to put our groceries away, drop off the other groceries, and follow the plan to the letter until it starts over again two weeks later.
While it’s fun to do resource management for a single player character, it is really hard to do resource management for four different living beings. Plus a very insistent guinea pig. I spent an afternoon organizing all of my spices, generating a spreadsheet of what I had and what I needed for my two-week cooking window. I HAVE A SPICE SPREADSHEET.
Nine months. We’ve been doing this for nine month.
7 comments
I hate resource management. I hate meal planning. I’m tired of having a terrible memory with a poor idea of what I have in stock. I want someone else to do this for a while. But I like shopping…
This sounds exhausting. I feel like we are all in a fatigued state from living so carefully the past 9 months. Just living is tiring. I really loved going back to the grocery store, picking out my own produce, making impulse buys, and now our numbers are so high that we are going back to instacart pickup. I think it is so lovely that you guys do the shopping for other families too. Also I am not surprised that you hander a spice spreadsheet… Sending you a hug. It’s so hard when we have no idea when this will be over.
I am so exhausted by this. I have always been a meal planner but it was nice to know that flexibility was out there and if I wanted to pop to the store for something to change it up, I could. And now, for so many reasons, there’s no popping. Cases are rising again. My kids are remote schooling and can’t be left alone, and are home all the time. Not to mention that items are once again difficult to come by. Not as bad as in April, but enough to deter me from risking a trip out for something that might not even be there. It’s all so tiring.
I’ve never played a resource management game. And now that I’ve lived through this, I don’t think I’ll be starting any time soon.
It is all so very frustrating. One of our towns does NOT want to know what we’ll be eating in advance. If he finds out our planned list, total chaos ensues. We have a little grocery store that is right across the street from us, but our numbers are going up too, and compared to the big chain stores this little place isn’t as clean. My husband does all our shopping, since I have lost my job and the kids are at home, and he is so quick to just “run across the street for this or that “. It is all a little too stressful in my book.
That’s seriously impressive.
I found it a novelty for seven weeks. It was fun, and I have adopted some of the practices more permanently. But nine months? Like Lori, I find that seriously impressive. Don’t underestimate your achievements. Maybe put a treat on the next list just to celebrate yourselves for doing this?
Dh is really good at this. We’re not especially great at meal planning, but we keep a lot of certain staples & a few frozen/convenience foods on hand, so that we have options. And there are certain things we pick up on almost every grocery run, like milk, yogurt, bread & frozen orange juice.
It’s one thing to do it for your own household, but two others as well? You & Josh deserve medals.