When you have a deposit system and a back porch, the empties tend to pile up...
Lloyd Alter
As anyone who has seen pictures of our freezer knows, I like a martini at the end of a long day and a glass of wine with dinner. I wish Discovery Communications was more like Sterling Cooper and kept Canadian Club in the supply closet.
A year and a half ago I was not feeling well, concluded that alcohol was not agreeing with me and stopped drinking anything for a few months. Then I took my mom to Florida (she likes her wine), joined her for a few and that was the end of that.
There are a lot of reasons that I wanted cut back on the drink at the end of the day or the wine with dinner. I am doing a full-time job of writing for TreeHugger and Planet Green, I am president of a volunteer organization, I am trying to write a book. I really don't have any time to waste and it fogs your mind.
Then of course there are the environmental issues; I will spend all day talking about local food, complain about excess packaging, how I won't buy orange juice shipped from Florida, but then I will buy a glass bottle of fermented grape juice from Chile or Australia? That's hypocrisy.
Also, where we live it can be embarrassing. Liquor and wine are sold at the Government operated liquor store which we can walk to, but to get our deposit back on the empties we have to drive to the beer store (don't ask, it is too weird and complicated), so they tend to pile up on the back porch all winter and you see the full evidence of your excess.
But until I started this exercise of tracking what we spend as a family, I had no idea what a hole it was drilling in my budget. We spend more in a month than the average American spends on alcohol in a year. (caveat: because of taxes, it is a lot more expensive here, probably 50% more than in the US) That is it; I am imitating TreeHugger founder Graham's campaign to make us all weekday vegetarians and I am becoming a weekday teetotalitarian, saving my martinis for the weekend.
With a short interruption as I take my mom to Florida next week. You can't be doctrinaire.
See the simple dollar's take on alcohol and budgets.
