Saturday’s Activities Include: martial arts, lunch, decluttering pantry

I took T. to martial arts. While we were in Hudson, we went over to Savers and dropped off some luggage and backpacks that I don’t think I’ll ever use again. Then we mailed a couple things at the post office.

R. and I made lunch: ditalini, cannellini beans, fennel, mushrooms previously cooked with vermouth, tomatoes, dried herbs (oregano, basil, thyme) and lemon juice. I put some green parts of chopped scallions in mine, and some of the vegan Sunbasket parsley pecan pesto. He added salt to his. We cooked the beans and the rest of it in some of the leftover Sichuan peppercorn infused oil. The pasta and beans we had in the pantry. The fennel was this past week’s bulb (half had been used as a replacement for onion in one of the meal kit meals). I forget what the mushrooms were from. The lemon was leftover from the Thai stir fry with egg on black rice (Thursday lunch). The result was tasty, and used up a bunch of small containers in the fridge. These are all the sorts of things that in the past were saved and eventually pitched without using; it is becoming a game I play in my head. What is sitting in the fridge from this last week and what could it be combined with to produce a lunch or dinner on the weekend when we don’t have meal kits?

I’m reasonably certain that if I hadn’t generally had more money than time / cognitive space, I would have learned to do this long ago, like, you know, normal people. I have limited recollection of doing something like this during my first marriage, when money was tight (mostly because my first husband spent everything that came in the door and then some on things like action figures. Look, I get the appeal of action figures. But really. Food. Rent. Stuff like that.).

I’m trying to make it so that avoiding waste and decluttering work together instead of in opposition. I don’t know if this will work as a general thing, but the reduction in cognitive load as a result of the meal kits (which present their own packaging clutter problem) has freed me up to take on a little side task.

My sister bought a copy of a book about adult children of hoarders. It’s really interesting.

When I was poking around in the pantry (and finding the boxed cannellini beans which saved me hauling out the instant pot), I worked around several cans and boxes that I know perfectly well will never be eaten. They have arrived since the last purge of the Pantry of the Apocalypse. A couple of them are about six months old (had people over for the holidays, some cans stuck around). A few items came as part of a very sweet care package, that we have consumed all of the elements that we are ever going to consume, leaving behind two boxes. A few items were things that I subbed out from the meal kits (didn’t use a container of vegetable stock, because the sodium was crazy high and it also had too much allium — we used a different stock option in the pantry, same thing for olives and garbanzo beans). All of these things were well within their Best Buy date. It occurred to me that I’ve walked past the box for the food pantry at Roche Bros several hundred times (possibly more than a thousand, by this time), so I checked their donation guidelines. They are now waiting in the car. Again, pretty sure that this is the kind of thing that Normal People figure out much earlier in their developmental arc, but sometimes, I get there a lot slower than others.

_Children of Hoarders_ complaining about while reading

I have somewhat mixed feelings about this book. The first section of the book, which described recent DSM changes (which I had not been paying any attention to) and broke down various things that can result in secondary hoarding, and the various contributors to primary hoarding, was really, really great. Straight up awesome. And this is somewhat ironic, because I actually asked my sister who read it before me if there was anything in the book about the process by which people became hoarders, and she was a little vague — this section at the beginning of the book was _exactly_ what I was asking whether it existed in the book and it definitely does.

Parts of the CBT (cognitive behavior therapy — yeah, you go with your kinky self, that is not what we are talking about here!) and ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy, which I also have mixed feelings about) descriptions in the next portion of the book are straightforward. The only issue I had with them is what I have with lots of books about dealing with all kinds of difficult people. The books — if competently written — are suggesting that you can “improve” or extend or wtf your relationship with these difficult people and here’s how. But if you _actually follow_ the guidelines, and the person is actually at the difficult end of these difficult categories, you never actually had a relationship with that person (or, the person that you had the relationship with is loooooong gone, and the body walking around now is fundamentally someone else, sadly) and by following the guidelines, you will almost certainly walk yourself away from spending much time with them. Which on the one hand, duh, what you should have set out to do. On the other hand, a little dishonest.

There’s always a chance — who knows, maybe a good chance — that if you are reading one of these books, you really are a huge contributor to all kinds of problematic relationships, and if you really do what these books advise, you’ll experience really great improvement and meaningful relationships with the difficult people who drove you to read the book. But again, the presentation is a bit misleading if that’s the underlying issue. And hard to believe that that _is_ the underlying issue for children of hoarders. (Or, for that matter, readers of books about various kinds of personality disorders.)

About half way through the book, the authors spend a fair amount of time describing something called “barbing”, which I had not previously encountered. They didn’t invent it — while it isn’t the easiest thing to google, you can find studies using the technique in anger management studies. I wouldn’t say that any of the studies I read were particularly compelling, but generally speaking, meditation, visualization and desensitization stuff doesn’t have great research to back it up. Which isn’t to say it is worthless. Far from it. But I have some concerns about barbing in particular. If you have an anger management problem — if people doing routine peopley sorts of things around you lead you to say and do things that go viral on the internet — then ratcheting that anger response down would be beneficial. But a lot of people have anger that they _don’t_ act on, and they really should. They are being abused, and they should leave. They should report the person or persons. They should defend themselves and their stuff. Whatever is appropriate. I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Get good advice from someone you trust in confidence before proceeding. Etc. Using a technique to instead muffle further that negative emotion signal that you have a boundary violation that needs to be addressed, well.

“In as much detail as you can, imagine your parent saying the words over and over again; it is expected that you will feel some anger as you do this. Repeat until you notice that you are more bored than angry.” Then you get someone to play-act it neutrally, then with an angry tone. “Continue with the repetition of the expression, until, again, you feel boredom rather than anger.”

The authors say this: “The goal is not to gain complete relief from the anger that you feel surrounding these thoughts, images, and expressions, but rather to gain exposure to the experience of being angry. This practice will empower you to experience anger without necessarily becoming drawn into angry behavior. If you are prepared to experience anger-provoking scenarios, with resolve to act in opposition to the feelings that these scenarios might evoke, you are on the road to acting in line with who you would like to be, rather than who your angry impulses will urge you to be.”

Maybe.

Here’s what I _wish_ had been included, and emphasized instead (maybe it appears later): When parent says anger-provoking Thing A, Respond B. Chain the desired behavior, rather than just being bored by Thing A. This is super important. If you know that some dickhead (possibly a parent) will predictably say Thing A to you, and you will become incensed, then take some calm time when no one is around to plot what you want to do in response. Rehearse _that_ after someone play acts Thing A. Otherwise, when the person does Thing A, you are going to basically be slightly bored ... and still not taking the action you wanted to take.

Take it from someone who has long since figured out that it is possible to become bored jumping off a bridge. Literally. And to decide to stop jumping off the bridge because of the discomfort of banging into the bungee cord. Rather than, you know, figuring out that actually going through life so numb to it that jumping off a bridge is what it takes to make you feel something, and then realizing, oh, I can stop really feeling _that_ too. Anger is there for a reason (for most of us, anyway). Figure out what your anger is motivating you to do — probably telling you that get as far away / spend as little time around the dickhead in question as possible, but other things are possible, too, like, you know, reporting criminal activity or suing someone for failure to perform on a contract or whatever — and program yourself to do that thing. I can say with a lot of confidence that _that_ feels really good. And does not involve further numbing oneself to life and its vicissitudes.

Generally speaking, throughout the book, the authors are pretty negative about the idea that an adult child of a hoarder is going to successfully change the hoarder (hey, _that_ level of reality has been attained. Yay!). And they do acknowledge that it may be necessary for the child of a hoarder to limit or terminate contact with the parent. But equally, throughout the book they treat “estrangement” as an awful thing to be avoided. Needless to say, that sort of annoys me.

I’m going to continue reading for a bit, but may DNF this, as I have probably DNF’ed _Waste Land_.

ETA:

OK, DNF. I got into the next section, which is about depression and “behavioral activation”.

There’s an exercise, generate a behavioral-activation schedule.

“In a notebook or on a separate sheet of paper”

That sounds innocent enough.

“Generate a list of responsibilities that you have neglected...Make the list long and comprehensive; break each item down in terms of its constituent tasks. Do not become overwhelmed by the length of the list.”

If you are not laughing yet, well, good for you! Gallows humor is not one of your top tier unhealthy coping mechanisms!

I have a few responsibilities in my life (<— weaponized understatement, for anyone who parachuted in here via google). I’ve read a lot of books on personal organization, home organization, time management — I’ve even read GTD by David Allen like, a half dozen times. I can take a book on the topic I’ve never read, at this point, skim it, and describe how you can reframe the strategies in the book within the GTD framework. So I am entirely capable of reading the rest of that paragraph, and going on at some length about its suggestion to “put a star next to activities that must be completed before the end of the day” etc. and why this list making strategy might work for someone out there (honestly, virtually every Make a Haphazard List and Start Ticking Items Off approach will work for _someone_), and also why it will make things considerably worse for everyone else.

But you know, in case you were okay with the star for today, dash for end of the week, bullet point for the next month and heart next to stuff you actually enjoy doing, here is the next paragraph:

“The next stop is to plan the next twenty-four hours with attention to the list you generated...Write an hour-by-hour schedule, and be sure to include at least one enjoyable (or previously enjoyable) activity.”

Honestly, Fly Lady seems pretty reasonable by comparison (<— comparison intended to be humorous, and not taken literally, also not sarcastic).

Predictably, they then want you to put together a schedule for the week, etc. NOWHERE in here is there any discussion of Do You Actually Need to Do This. The depressed child of a hoarder is assumed to just magically “know” whether their overwhelming, unmet commitments actually should even _be_ on a list. Nothing here about urgent vs. important. Nothing here about, make a list of people to notify to say, oh, I suspect you’ve already figured this out, but I will not actually be showing up with cookies for the bake sale. Or whatever.

Instead: “As you complete the activities you have planned, it is likely that you will experience some relief from feelings of depression, because activity and productivity can be immensely powerful in this regard. Having a plan alone can serve as motivation for moving forward, but if you struggle in the moment to complete any specific task, try the next exercise.”

The next section is basically, okay, you can’t motivate to clean the house, so focus on the dishwashing. Can’t focus on that? Try just one dish. I don’t really understand how they think that you could possibly get through the above insane list making exercise, if they recognize that some people can’t get beyond washing a single dish.

“This exercise is intended to demonstrate that any task can appear less overwhelming if it is deconstructed and presented in palatable individual tasks.”

Allow me to pause here to chuckle — it is interfering with my ability to type.

If they had actually done a decent job on the list-making exercise, I would be more willing to cut them a little slack here. But they _did not_ do a decent job on the list-making exercise. And they have followed it up with platitudes — not literally, but you can hear them thinking loudly in the background — A Journey of a Thousand Miles is Eaten One Bite at a Time. Eating an elephant begins with a single step. Or something.

This is the kind of book you write when you want to say, If You Had Just Done As I Advised. This is the kind of book you write, when you want to sell to readers who do not have the problem in question, and you would like them to nod sagely at how good your advice is.

This is a terrible book. DNF.

A Few (More) Remarks on Meal Kits

Meal kits take n

I have been doing meal kits for a few weeks now, and talking to others about them (whether they have tried them themselves, or are just mentally exploring the space). Here are my current thoughts on what meal kits do well, and how they fit into a longer context of efforts to automate / labor reduce / make more efficient the basic task of feeding a household.

Here are some other examples of outsourcing / automating / labor reducing / making more efficient the task of feeing a household: restaurants (eat in); takeout and/or delivery of prepared meals, including frozen foods and prepared foods in a grocery store, fast food, pizza, takeout from sit down restaurants, etc.; in-home cooks (old skool “cook”, late 1990s “Personal Chef” — so there part of most days or once every few days cooking many meals and leaving them ready for reheating / plating); community kitchen / meal prep services OUT of the home (Dream Dinners). And now meal kits.

Meal Kits reduce the cognitive load of feeding a family, while preserving choice and a substantial amount of customization. First, the apps / websites supply a number of meals that can be chosen among (thus allowing choice and customization — avoiding allergens, disliked foods, meeting other dietary constraints such as sodium, etc.). This is constrained, versus looking at NYT What to Cook This Week or opening a cookbook or looking at AllRecipes etc. Constrained choices have less load. The meals are chosen _as meals_ to hit a certain calorie range, and include a certain proportion of macronutrients (you can choose which range, i.e. low carb). This reduces the load versus assembling a group of dishes. The instructions interleave the steps for the full meal, rather than for each dish, and are constructed to ensure that the entire meal hits the plate at an optimum point for each component and at the same time on the clock. Meal kits allow a wide separation between planning the meal and preparing the meal, so you don’t have to do it all at once.

Meal kits allow you to _not_ go to the store. This could be helpful in a “food desert” (if you can get it delivered there — I have no idea if you can), or if you will be arriving at a time when the local stores are not open but would like to start cooking before they are open (the box of food is insulated and chilled, so as long as it isn’t a theft or pilferage risk it can sit a while until you get to it). It also supports people who are “socialed out” and can’t cope with the personal interaction of shopping, who are agoraphobic, who cannot drive, etc. This is also a substantial time saver.

Meal kits do portion control. In addition to helping someone manage weight / health issues, this reduces the need to manage leftovers.

Meal kits provide small amounts of specialized foods (spices, unusual vegetables, etc.). This allows you to try with low commitment something that you haven’t had before and are not sure if you will like. It also means you can have something occasionally, without worrying about whether you will use up a container before it goes bad.

Some meal kits offer seasonality (ingredients that are close to optimal harvest time), benefiting the maker by reducing cost of ingredients and the customer by hitting peak flavor. Figuring out what is seasonal and meal planning around it is even more cognitive load.

Meal kits do repeat dishes, but often with modifications (a switch in protein, or the contents of a salad, or spicing, or the sauce, etc.); they provide novelty.

Meal kits help to teach new cooks how to cook — right down to telling you to cut something in half lengthwise, and then crosswise in a certain width. You are warned to thoroughly rinse things like bok choy which tend to trap sand and dirt. They also make it so cooks of varying skill levels can share the task of cooking, without requiring the more skilled cook to explain every damn thing. The pictures and bolding of ingredients in the interleaved instructions helps avoid common errors, and supports cooks who are more visual learners than people who do best with words.

Meal kits control the total time commitment. With extremely rare exceptions total time from pulling the kit out of the fridge, to closing the dishwasher and starting it, including eating the meal and having a beverage with it is generally at or under 1 hour.

Meal kits are an improvement over frozen foods, delivered foods and takeout foods, in terms of customizability. Meal kits are an improvement over a Personal Chef in terms of cost of paid labor. Meal kits are an improvement over community kitchens, in terms of being able to stay at home / avoid leaving the house. Meal kits justify their added expense (and packaging and other negatives) by providing lasting benefits in the form of improved knowledge of cooking techniques and ingredients versus a typical American eater. The portion control and balance of macronutrients is generally better than inexpensive delivered prepared foods and takeout.

Meal kits justify their incremental cost over planning and cooking food one buys on one’s own at the supermarket by emphasizing that meal kits will divert one from eating out, through a combination of sunk cost (I already bought this, I should eat it) and appeal (this is way better than takeout). The general idea is that, left to our own devices, we’ll probably decide to eat out some nights each week, rather than eat the food in our own fridge. But we probably will do that a lot less or not at all, if the fridge contains meal kits.

I’m not sure exactly how to relate meal kits to services which let you select recipes and then produce a shopping list with instacart (walmart, amazon, etc.) integration services.