Don't Always Follow the Rules

My husband and I have stopped “cutting the ends off the ham”, and it’s totally been worth it.

If you don’t know the ham story, here it is (edited for simplicity):

A man’s wife sent him to the store for a ham. After he bought it, she asked him why he didn’t have the butcher cut off the end of the ham. The man asked his wife why she wanted the end cut off. She replied that her mother had always done it that way and that was reason enough for her. Since the wife’s mother was visiting, they asked her why she always cut off the end of the ham. Mother replied that this was the way her mother did it. Mother, daughter and the man then decided to call Grandmother and solve this three-generation mystery. 

Grandmother promptly replied that she cut the ends off the ham because her roaster was too small to cook it in one piece.

See the point?

Why keep doing things the way they’ve always been done just because that’s how they’ve always been done?

Question things, especially if they don’t make sense.

Here’s a personal kitchen example – I know it’s normal for pots and pans to go in the bottom cabinets, but I got tired of bending down to grab them, so guess what. We keep our frying pans, our sauce pans, and other often-used pans in the high cabinets. We keep the food storage containers to the right of the stove and up high instead of pushed to the back of a cabinet below. And it makes sense for us.

Rethink some things.

You can do this is any area of life, but here’s another kitchen-related change we made.

Our fridge came with so many shelves, and while that’s great, we found ourselves having to play Tetris to get things to fit. So instead of continuing the Tetris game day after day, we just removed a shelf. Simple change. Problem solved.

The last example I’ll give from my personal life is when traveling:

We stopped doing the everybody get a drink at the convenience store habit. Instead of buying individual water bottles when we stop, we now just get a gallon of water if we’re thirsty. We either put it in our separate cups or drink it straight from the jug while we travel. It’s 92 cents for a gallon of water vs. $2.29 for his water and $1.79 for mine ($4.08).

Take a moment to look at some of the things you do.

• Why do you do them?
• Does it make sense to continue doing it that way?
• Or would a different way be smarter? quicker? cheaper? less stressful?

You know the saying… old habits die hard – but once you to get that new habit ingrained, life becomes simpler. 

Consider the way you do life every now and again. Self-awareness is a great quality.

Keep improving,
Venus Monique