On nights my partner-who-cooks makes food, I do the cleanup, and vice versa. Last night he cooked a meal none of us liked much, which felt fine, but in the process generated an unusual number of dirty dishes, which did not. I simmered about this. On the subsequent morning, my two partners started discussing where to buy lunch from with no acknowledgement of the leftovers. Frustrated, I started a dumb semiconflict about cooking (the latest in a high conflict month). In the ensuing discussion I wondered whether we should become a takeout-only household.
We talked about the money and time costs per person in the scenario where we exclusively eat takeout vs exclusively cook, and then my maligned partner said, “I think I’m fine with the current amount we cook.”
I stared off into space, stunned by my stupidity. Because I immediately realized that I, too, was fine with the current ratio we cooked and ordered takeout, which is half and half.
Three months ago we had a baby and moved to a high cost-of-living area. In the many discussions about this, I suggested and the others agreed that we should transition to being a mostly-cooking household. So, everything short of “cooking most meals” had felt like failure. But this wasn’t true! The status quo of merely increased cooking was fine for us. The only reason I was unhappy was that I hadn’t been paying attention to reality as we made the switch, and was insensitive the actual tradeoffs.
(It’s more complicated than “the optimal amount of cooking is half” – I think it’s possible for me to cook the majority of the family’s meals, but I was blind to the reality that alternating cooking and cleaning with my partner who cooks was more costly than I realized. We also both do too much explore-mode cooking, which tends to consume a lot of energy to produce food we don’t want to eat.)
So when I actually looked at reality, the options and their respective “grades” were:
- Become a completely takeout-eating household: 4/10. Seems kind of absurd but we arguably value the time and variety more than the money we lose ($7000 per year per person, compared to being a completely cooking-eating household).
- Become a mostly cooking house: 3-9/10, depending on implementation.
- Our current 50/50 state: 7/10.
Whereas my not-looking-at-reality grades were:
- Become a completely takeout household: 0/10
- Becoming a mostly cooking house: 10/10, the goal
- Our current 50/50 state: 5/10
I sighed, went to my wall of madness, and wrote IS THERE ACTUALLY A PROBLEM?