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

You’ve got to stop using the credit cards for this, it’s insane, it’s debt, you will have to repay it. I don’t think gradually cutting down will help, you just need to stop using the apps and destroy your credit cards as a first step.
Then plan a weeks’s ready meals based on the style of take seats you enjoy. I can recommend Morrison’s Nourish range.
Good luck.

@TheTakeawayDilemma

I know it’s a lot of money and the health implications are scary too. I think that’s why I posted here. I’ve accepted I need to change, I just feel overwhelmed with where to start. It feels like a mountain!

Thank you for all the suggestions so far, I’m going to look up the organised mum method and perhaps even rope DH into a star chart.

I’ll admit I’m definitely ‘house manager’ despite working us both having stressful jobs. DH and I have spoken about it before and he promises to do some house management (food shops or whatever else) but then never does. I think I’ve kind of given up waiting for him to do it and this is where we have ended up

I hate to say this but please, please do not have children with this man.

If this is what he is like now he will be 10,000 times worse when you have a baby. This is not an exaggeration. If anything it's not a high enough number.

I have never written LTB in all my time on MN but you are not yet trapped by children. If you do want kids you need to start thinking about how to extricate yourself from this relationship because if this is how things are for you already as a couple it will only get worse with kids.

I'm a bit of a hoarder. I find the best way is to clear little and often. Start with one drawer, one cupboard. My Tesco has a clothing bin so when I go I try and take a bag for the clothing recycling. To me that's easier than saying I'll do a whole room. Also I listen to music or an audiobook which helps me stay focused. I know it's hard.

You can get a large shepherd pie, large lasagne, takeaway for two deal bags, large pasta bake from the supermarket, bag of salad, some microwave in the bag veg just for the first week. It is not as ideal as cooking from scratch but it will be a very straightforward transition.
Then register at a supermarket and book a series of click and collects, time the pickups so they are on your way home from work, then you have food immediately available when you are tempted for takeaway, You can book upto a month at the moment.
Then get the kitchen and the lounge cleared and cleaned if you can get even one room feeling really clean and decluttered it will give you a massive boost.

Start with cooking 3-4 night a week. Nothing hard just simple meals. Next start with your bedroom. Make sure you have clean sheets and start to declutter. Once you start cooking and the bedroom is under control to go the bathroom. Clean and declutter. Can't do every room at once, you'll get overwhelmed and do nothing. You can do this. Both you and your husband can get your home in shape in no time.

Getting takeaway food on credit is ridiculous.
Honesty, just buy wraps, lettuce and tomatoes, it will be cheaper and healthier. Throw in hummus or feta for variety. Omelettes are easy as well, with a salad. Fruits for desert. We do not cook anything complicated on week evenings.

And don’t have children with a man who does f* all around the house. That’s a disaster in the making.

We also have a tendency to fall into takeaway traps and had to find our limits and what was functional for us. It's essential for us that we're both on board with planning.

We only cook every second night during the week. So always make enough food to do us for two nights. This helps a LOT. Then at the weekends we allow a Friday night takeaway, and Saturday dinner is always something very very easy (like goujons and chips).

Lunches are things that can be assembled within minutes. Beans on toast. Bagels with cream cheese and salmon. Leftover chicken in wraps with some lettuce and cheese.

We tried one of the recipe companies one week and hated it. Having to cook every night made me want to cry.

Have you got a slow cooker?
I have the best intentions of cooking meals, but at the end of a working day, my best intentions are burnt out.
But they’re there at the start of the day.
The easiest meals to prepare involve diced meat plus supermarket’s own/branded sauce and steamed rice or noodles. You can do sweet and sour, korma, rogan josh, chilli. Add the meat and the sauce to the slow cooker and cook on low for 6-8 hours. Go to work. When you get back, microwave some steamed rice and serve.

Forgot to say how we handle keeping the house clean as we also struggle with this. We keep a shared Google Keep ote on our phones with all the tiny tasks that need doing (including stuff like "check wardrobe for having that can be cleared out") and both take 15 mins a day and tick some of the items off. This helps keep everything at a decent level of clean, and means we no longer have to spend entire weekends cleaning when things have gotten out of hand.

For getting on top of the house I thoroughly recommend "A Slob Comes Clean" podcast - she has books and website, forum etc too. You can make a hell of a difference to your physical environment in 5 minutes a day.

For the food, I'm somebody who has had a chronic fatigue condition and truly didn't always have the energy to cook. There is nothign wrong with convenience - yes yes to the Cook meals, and also just regular supermarket ready meals and easy to put together meals - I use frozen chips, mash and those vegetables in a microwave steam fresh bags, for example. Your home cooked meals don't have to be fancy or particularly healthy to begin with - a box of frozen breaded cod, a bag of frozen chips plus 25 minutes in the oven and a tin of mushy peas in the microwave and you've got a healthier, cheaper fish & chips meal for example. somebody upthread spoke about diced meat plus a jar of sauce in the slow cooker - and steamed rice - you can substitute a bag of microwave rice instead of steaming the rice if even that sounds like too much effort.

How about just one day at a time. Have a think about tomorrow's dinner - what could you pick up from a convenience store on the way home and shove in the oven or on the stove top?

Have you tried Gousto? Easier than food shopping but healthier than takeaway!

Also you could afford a cleaner for £20-40 a week

We regularly have meals like breaded cod or sausages, broccoli and sweetcorn. Stick cod or sausages in the oven, cook veg. Very easy.

You don't have to tackle the cleaning all at once. Set a 15 min timer and both fold laundry. When timer goes off, that's all you need to do.

I got out of control too. House was a mess. But just doing a few minutes has got me back on track. If you feel like doing more after 15mins, you can keep going, but you don't have to. It's that permission not to do it all at once that made it get done.

Flylady.com is an excellent resource for getting your home and habits together. It's free and you can sign up for the daily reminders too if you want (they're also free).

"FLY" stands for "First Love Yourself," if anyone was wondering. The lady who runs it advises only doing the small assignments she puts out there for the day and not worrying about the rest.

In a short time, you find your place far more organized and then you have ongoing support to learn to keep it that way, easily.

Running a home seems to a lot of us a natural set of skills or something but for many people, it's not. The Flylady walks you through it over and over again, a little bit at a time, until you do get the routines down. :)

I disagree with the people saying that you shouldn't cut out the takeaways completely.

It's not about the takeaway, it's about the fact that it's an addiction and the OPs addiction sounds pretty serious.

There are some people who say that they don't deny themselves a takeaway when they want it because if they do they'll binge etc. and that seems to be taken as a rule that everyone should live by, but really there are plenty of other people who that advice doesn't suit, if they have a takeaway on a Friday they'll often still feel like shit on a Saturday so then they'll have another takeaway and so on.

I think for some people what would work best is no takeaways at home and perhaps going out for a meal instead and eating their treat meal out in a restaurant. It's also a more mindful way of eating as you have to sit and talk to the people you're with, often people eating takeaways at home are sitting watching TV while eating, then it becomes a habit where every time they are sitting watching something on TV the cravings kick in.

Baby steps. Start with making a weekly eat schedule and plan accordingly.
For example:
Monday : take away
Tuesday : ready made salad from the supermarket
Wednesday: simple meal that you made yourself like a pasta
Etc. You can also try batch cooking during the weekend or when you make things like pasta, cook enough for 2 days. That’s nearly 1/3 of your evening meals for that week covered!

Regarding the home. It’s very hard if it’s a huge mess to take on everything at once.
Start with 1 room. Every night, one of you does cooking, the other goes sorting out stuff in that particular room. When dinner is ready, you stop working on the room and continue doing so over the next evenings, until all the rooms are done.

Do you have any Virgo friends? They love helping and organizing

I’ve helped a hoarder before

PM me if you’d like some advice on where to start etc. I’m not well. Otherwise I’d of physically helped. But I can help with other things

Is it possible the mess and clutter are making it harder to cook? Having to move and clean a bunch of stuff is a disincentive to prep a meal, especially if you're already tired and a habitual takeaway buyer. If so, you'd be better off dealing with that before you take on the diet.
Can you both take a week's annual leave to tackle it? Go through room- by- room, hire a skip and just purge.
If laundry is building up in a two person household it probably means you own way too many clothes. Do you hop online and buy more when you can't find anything to wear? Before you take it on have a plan, including finding charities that will accept the kind of stuff you expect to donate.
When you're done you can hire someone to deep clean.
If you and DH have been hoarding legit, then following up with counselling to deal with possible depression or related MH issues might be a good idea.

What about getting someone involved who owns a company that does organisation in your own home. They help you with all aspects of your life - decluttering, organising , simple finances etc. you could afford this in the long run with the money saved . It would also be a third party who can mediate . Your husband would need to be on board. Schedule a few days annual leave for it. Its so important for your home life to be under control

Instead of looking at all things you need to change as a whole maybe looking at one aspect to change first. Eg cleaning your whole kitchen first so you have a lovely space to enjoy preparing and cooking meals meals in and then maybe your dining area to enjoy siting down and eating together or vice versa. It can be quite overwhelming when you look at the whole picture and try and figure out where to start first.

Hire a skip for a week. Once you start putting things in it you’ll begin to see a real difference in your house. You have to be ruthless though. Don’t keep hold of things you never use or need. Just Chuck it out and you’ll feel so much better. As for the food situation,I’d start with some ready meals like others have suggested and work your way up to cooking meals. You will be ok. You’re in a shitty slump but the fact that you’re aware of it shows that you want to change. Go for it and you’ll feel like a new person

If you don't want to be cooking every night try doing batch cooking and freezing? I often do this to minimise cooking.

I think DH and I could easily slip into this if we didn’t check each other and agree to be sensible!
In lockdown we were both working and it started with a noble wish to support local businesses by ordering their take out options given we had the money!
I am perpetually knackered and just have no energy of a weeknight. I don’t really enjoy cooking. We agree Mon-Thurs no takeaways.

I would recommend having wraps two nights a week- we use Oomph vegan kebab, or falafel, or steak/chicken. Quickly heat/ fry it and serve with microwaved wraps, tzatziki hummus etc, purchase pre prepared salads. Takes under 10 mins.
Frozen pre prepped veg is a game changer and I have zero guilt over using it pretty consistently. Makes it easy to throw some diced peppers and onions into anything cooking.
We have a fresh pasta like ravioli or gnocchi one night a week which literally takes 4 minutes to cook and then drizzle with olive oil and serve with grated parmo reggiano.
We also buy things like microwave new potato bags and chicken sausages/ shroomdogs so you shove the sausages in a pan with some frylight- microwave the new potatoes and a tin of peas and again takes 10 minutes.
We also often buy pre prepped salad bowl and halloumi- fry the halloumi and shove on the salad - we might fry a portobello mushroom with it too.
I’m not pretending it’s the healthiest and I do feel envious of some people’s lovely home made salads actually but we have found when we buy a load of fresh stuff with good intentions it just goes to rot as we get too busy and unmotivated - thankfully our rabbits are happy to Hoover it up.
I’d also just keep some ready meals in.
Sainsbury’s does some amazing ready meals- when I was younger I used to quite regularly go to wasabi for dinner on my own and lo and behold Sainsbury’s do wasabi ready meals so I have chicken katsu and Korean wings- it feels like a takeaway but is frequently on offer so it’s a tenner for the two of us.
I would actually be hesitant in your situation about batch cooking. We got a slow cooker and had great intentions but found we never fancied that daal stuck in the bottom of the freezer- DH ended up using it for lunches. We still do use the slow cooker once a week or so as you can Chuck the stuff in it the night before (mince, onion, chopped tomato, stock, kidney beans) and have a meal the next day. I don’t quite herald it as the solution to your situation currently and I would switch to ready/easy meals first.
It is important to be realistic- god knows how many times I have bought new recipe books and then been excellent for 3 days before it falls by the wayside. I long ago accepted that it was actually cheaper for me to buy ‘healthy’ ready meals and fresh soups for lunches at work rather than pretend I was going to wake up in the morning and prep a salad or wrap, inevitably not, and then end up buying crap instead.
I don’t agree with cutting out takeaways entirely- even if it is an addiction we rarely recommend going cold Turkey and we recommend ‘harm reduction’ and making sure you are stable and have laid the groundwork before giving something up. Replacing it with an alternative half the nights is still progress.

De cluttering I’m also a lazy sod- my defence is we are always decorating so shoving stuff from one room to the other. I do find ‘chunking’ it helps- way too overwhelming to think of it all. For example Last night I sorted a pile of papers- yes it wasn’t doing all my life admin but it cleared a bit of floorspace. Today I have a small card board box of stuff to sort through- if it’s not useful or sentimental it goes.