MONICA

Monica is a beauty professional living in Ventura County. Her husband, Jeremy, is a chef, and they have a son William, 6. Since Monica spends most of her time running from client to client, she needs solutions that enable her to give her family the highest quality of life with minimum effort.

When Elizabeth asked me whether we’d be interested in participating in Shift Your Habit, I couldn’t really imagine what we needed help with. While we’re not a family of environmental activists, we do try to recycle, we don’t use plastic, we buy whatever we can pre-owned, and we attempt to live as organically as possible. I knew we could work on our gas budget–I drive a big, old truck–but I couldn’t really figure out a way to improve my fuel efficiency. Since we couldn’t afford to buy a new car, I told her thanks, but no thanks.

Then Elizabeth asked about food. I suspected there was a financial leak in our family, and it had dawned on me that it might be related to food waste. I’ve always been a bit neurotic about food and nutrition. I shopped every day to be sure things were fresh. I never ate, or fed my family, things that had been frozen. I threw away leftovers. I bought way too much of everything.

When I took the time to calculate our weekly grocery expenditures, I was shocked. I knew that the key to living less wastefully in the kitchen would be information. So that’s when I agreed to be part of Shift Your Habit. I’m so glad I did.

My husband Jeremy, however, was very open-minded from the beginning. He started getting involved in how much we were spending at the grocery store, and on what. He knew we had to stop the financial leak as his 14-year-old car was on its last lap and would soon need to be replaced. Well, believe it or not, the food shifts we’ve made have saved us so much money that we were able to buy him that new car. If, a few months ago, you’d told me I could trade garbage bags full of food for a new car, I would have said you were crazy. Now, I’m living by a new motto: If I’m not going to use it, I don’t buy it. And if I do buy it, I use it!