Daily takeaway and slobby lifestyle

[TheTakeawayDilemma]

I know I’m BU, I just need some serious help and I’ve name changed for this because I’m horrified at how big this issue has become.

DH and I started using a delivery app a lot over the first lockdown as it was easier than trying to get a food delivery slot. This escalated and even when we could get food shopping again, we continued to get takeaways. We now spend £30-60 a day on takeaways and even if we do promise ourselves we’ll be good (and get proper food shopping/delete all the delivery apps) it only lasts a couple of days. The stupid thing is, we can’t even afford to live like this. A lot of it goes on credit cards.

On top of this, our house has become unbearable. Laundry everywhere, boxes of stuff piled high everywhere, it’s just slowly becoming a hoarders paradise.

The issue is, I just don’t know how to correct this slobby path we have fallen down. We both have respectable jobs and work long hours, sometimes 6 days a week, and you’d never think we lived like slobs if you worked with us.

I cry every night just not knowing where to start making changes. We want children soon and there’s no way I could bring DCs into this kind of life.

Please help, I’m at my wits end

@BarbaraofSeville

Not all ready meals are 'highly processed'. If you go in M&S some are literally salmon, spinach, new potatoes, herbs and butter in a plastic tub, ready to microwave. Or Cook - it's just food that's been cooked from scratch by someone else, albeit on a larger scale.

Nutritionally identical to what you could produce in your own kitchen, but all the work done for you. If time or headspace is a barrier, a good solution and definitely a healthier and cheaper alternative to takeaways, which is what the OP asked for.

There will probably still be all kinds of crap in those.

They put wheat in yoghurt ffs.

@3Britnee Cook don't. But you also need to know how to read ingredients lists. They have to describe things different to you would for a recipe.

Eh. If they use "ham" they then have to describe what's in the ham they used so don't just put "ham". And the "preservatives" they use in this chicken pie is salt. Which you'd expect to find in any home cooked meal.

But these kinds of meals will be better for your body and your wallet than a takeaway and will have accurate nutritional info on them.

There are some typos in that post 🙄

That makes sense.

Jesus Christ, ready meals don't need to be unhealthy. Pick up a salad from
M&S some are under 400 calories with nothing but fresh stuff in them. OP is doing really well, it's just a suggestion for if things get hard, especially with her husband not helping out.

Thank you @BarbaraofSeville that was interesting, I hadn’t heard of them.

David,

DD played a lot of sport, with training before school and her school lunches were both expensive and poor quality. We used to heat up Cook! meals and put them in a thermos, which meant they were still hot at lunchtime. They are interesting and good quality, and indeed I was recently fooled when a friend served up Cook! for lunch. (I was helping her pack up her mother's old home in a hurry before the sale completed, so I was surprised that she appeared to have found the time to cook something so good.) We always have some in our freezer for those days when the alternative would be ordering a take away. (OPs problem.) They taste more authentic than M&S, especially the curries, which are quite different and less gloopy than other supermarket ones. They also deliver in some parts of the country.