This post was last updated on July 13th, 2022 at 09:49 am
Thanksgiving has arrived in the middle of a pandemic that one way or another has turned our world upside down. It has caused no shortage of disruptions and problems but mostly profound grief for so many. It might be difficult to feel grateful right now, but that’s what Thanksgiving calls on us to do. So in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’m encouraging you to share the bright spots in your life. Here’s my list of 5 good things to come out of the pandemic (all keeping in the Frugalmatic blog theme).
01 Less proves more this Halloween
The verdict is in, and I can confidently report candy collection and consumption plummeted at our house last month compared to a “normal” Halloween. Having fewer sweet treats around the house felt, oddly, liberating.
And the candy reduction wasn’t only because trick-or-treat was canceled this year. A key factor was the absence of trick-or-treat-like events in the weeks leading up to Halloween. Over the years, I’ve noticed how Halloween has turned into a month-long celebration. I’ve felt helpless at times as my kids have encountered candy giveaways at businesses, other homes and schools. What is a parent to do in the face of a sugary tidal wave?
This year felt like a candy drought at our house, but we didn’t feel a void. Rather, we simply emphasized other activities, such as dressing up and carving pumpkins.
For the record, our kids did get some candy. Just not near what would be usual for this time of year.
02 Making a better cook
We’ve never been big on eating out, but we’ve done even less of it since the pandemic started. As a result, I’ve perhaps become a better cook. I’m making more things from scratch and taking more time to understand how certain ingredients and their combinations affect a meal’s flavor.
I’m also experimenting with more dishes, as I’ve had more time to take bigger risks in the kitchen. I even recently attempted to replicate the recipe of my favorite barbecue sauce, Stubb’s. (I hope to eventually write a post about those efforts as I continue to tinker with my recipe).
Of course, our household is not alone in embracing home cooking. According to market research, 55% of grocery shoppers reported eating at home more often since the pandemic began. While a quarter of shoppers reported being “sick of having to cook more,” 35% of shoppers indicated “they found a new passion for cooking during the pandemic.”
Predictably, we’re also saving money by rarely eating out. Cooking at home is a habit I hope our family continues long after the pandemic is over.
03 The rise of the home haircut
I’m not sure it’s a good idea for my wife to continue cutting my hair after the pandemic. Don’t get me wrong. She did a nice enough job. I’ve told her how impressed I’ve been with her efforts. Ahem. Anyhow, I expect to return to the barber’s shop in the post-pandemic world because I enjoy it too much.
However, I expect to continue to cut our kids’ hair. I started cutting our son’s hair last year before the pandemic and before home haircuts became a thing. Each time I do a haircut, I get a little more efficient. I also think they’re also looking better.
Our daughter grows her hair long, so she needs fewer trims. However, our son doesn’t like his hair long, a point he made recently by taking a pair of scissors to his own bangs after I told him he’d have to wait a week for his next haircut. He chopped off a big chunk, and so perhaps I can now wait two weeks before his next cut.
Cutting our son’s hair saves around $150 a year or so, and more than that if we consider the time saved by not having to travel to a barber shop.
04 The stairway detour
People are searching for ways to avoid being in close contact with others, and they’re reportedly using the stairs instead of taking the elevator. The Centers for Disease Control recommends “limiting the number of individuals in an elevator at one time and designating one-directional stairwells, if possible.” The beauty of taking the stairs is that they’re, well, right there. You don’t have to go to a gym to get some exercise. You can find stairs at home, the office and just about any place with multiple levels. The climbing motion benefits your body in several ways.
Since I work from our ranch-style home, I’ve structured things so that I use the stairs throughout the day, namely by setting up my home office in the basement. We’ve also put a second pantry in our basement, which restocks our upstairs kitchen pantry. We then bring groceries to the basement to restock the basement pantry. During the pandemic, it’s allowed us to minimize grocery store trips. It’s also required more trips up and down the stairs than I initially expected. And that’s a good thing, in the frugalmatic world.
When our world as we knew it returns, we might all just keep taking those stairs.
05 Working the soil
The pandemic has given rise to the Victory Garden 2.0. Common place during World War II, Victory Gardens helped families cope with food shortages and rationing. Today, people are gardening as a way to keep active during quarantine and have tasty and nutritious food close at hand. It’s been difficult to find canning supplies because so many people are busy preserving their harvest.
Jennifer Atkinson, author of Gardenland: Nature, Fantasy and Everyday Practice, told NPR in a May 9 interview that people crave not the food so much as “contact with something real.” “We spend all day on screens,” she said. “We can’t be around each other at restaurants or ballparks. We can’t even give hugs or shake hands. So all of a sudden, the appeal of sinking your hands in the dirt and using your body in ways that matter, that becomes irresistible.”
There’s a lot of truth to her words. We were late to gardening this year, managing mainly a small plot for some tomatoes. This pandemic inspired us to expand our gardening efforts, and so I made a pair of 6-by-4-foot raised-bed gardens this fall in preparation for spring planting. We also recently acquired a freezer to increase our storage space for what I hope will be a plentiful harvest, resulting in fewer trips to the grocery store.
Focusing on gratitude
We’re suffering pandemic fatigue like everyone else, and it’s especially frustrating as we’re among the many families longing to see grandparents, parents, relatives and dear friends at Thanksgiving. We’ve made the decision like many others to stay home to prevent any possibility of spreading the virus. While it’s tempting to dwell on this disappointment, Thanksgiving calls on us to focus on the positives. What are you grateful for this week? What would be on your list of 5 good things to come out of the pandemic? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below.
It is kind of funny that all the things that we had been doing are now popular.
We have a garden where we grow tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, beets, carrots and other vegetables as well as raspberries, blueberries, apples and more from our fruit trees. We enjoy the garden and the fresh fruits and vegetables we get from it. We canned vegetables and made tomato sauce, plus filling the freezer and pantry.
We have been doing haircuts at home for years, we had the right tools and supplies to do the haircuts, that everyone was scurrying to find. So we continued to get our haircuts on our regular schedule. It is funny looking back, but my son hacked the hair on the side of his head a few years back and I noticed it in the evening. Thankfully my husband fixed it, but he had to cut it shorter than usual. My son still likes his hair kept short, and he tells hubby when he wants his haircut. While the gym was closed, we did a lot more hiking. The parking lots at the parks were fuller than usual as other people chose to get out for for fresh air, sunshine and exercise rather than hide in the house and eat junk food. Hubby is the family chef as well. He prefers to cook from single ingredients rather than prepared foods. The cost per ounce is less, plus we had plenty from the garden for him to work with. Now that the weather is cold, we are doing our weekly pizza nights. He makes his own dough, uses tomato sauce we made, as well as peppers and onions, as well as spices of oregano and basil from our garden that we dried. Hubby used to travel a good amount for his job, and he got sick of eating out. So we never really ate out much. He has also made cornbread muffins, and I do bake cakes and cookies. So our kitchen certainly gets a lot of use.
Sounds like you have a great system over there. Homemade pizza can really save a lot of money when you consider 2 large pizzas delivered can cost $40-plus, with tip.
If your husband has perfected his dough recipe like he has home haircuts, I imagine he makes a super tasty pizza.
He has a system of making his dough in advance, he makes it on a Wednesday night and puts the dough in smaller separate containers for the Saturday night pizza making. Here is a great tutorial on the process he follows. https://bakingsteel.com/blogs/news/72-hour-pizza-dough
He heats the oven with the pizza stone for an hour at the highest temperature. He has been talking about upgrading to a pizza steel, but he will still use the pizza stone for breads and rolls. He makes several small pizzas as everyone wants different toppings, and he doesn’t want to see food wasted because someone is picking off mushrooms, peppers, or onions. My youngest likes a plain cheese only, my older son wants ham and pineapple, I like pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, onions and peppers as does my husband. He makes extra as we love having it for leftovers. It is a production and everyone helps putting the toppings on their favorite type of pizza. It is a great family activity to do, plus we enjoy the results. I highly recommend doing it as my kids enjoy it and it is definitely a frugal win, especially when some of the toppings come from your own garden.