We went to Costco with the boys and my mother in law. I have to say, she saved me. I was in the "lets buy this crap and get it over with" mode and she kept me sane. There were several times when she said to me, "Just remember, once you open that the shelf-life isn't long so you might want to buy smaller containers of it. She was a life-saver!!!
The boys picked out tons of food, which I was grateful for. If they were picking it out, that meant they would eat it. I can't tell you how many times I've come home with groceries, only for them to turn their nose up at it or tell me "we are kinda burnt out of that". They were troopers.
Our consumables were shipped in September and they just arrived at our house on Thursday. Now the mistake we made here was listening to others tell us "Your consumables order should arrive at post around the same time as you do." Because of this statement, we brought NO food with with us. Why would we if our shipment was going to arrive same time as us? BIG MISTAKE! Thankfully our parents sent us care-packages of food.
Now don't get me wrong, we can buy food here in Ghana.....it's just dang expensive. There are some food items that are nearly impossible to find and when you do, you really pay for it. For example, good luck find celery. I found some once and it was $15 for a small stalk of celery that would've cost $1 in the states. But it was CELERY and you can hardly ever find it here. So we bought it and filled them up with peanut butter and enjoyed the snack!
So now that our consumables have arrived, we have had to figure out where to put them. The housing in Ghana is good, but there is next to NO storage. We had more storage space in London, which is notorious for not having enough space for anything. So now we are trying to organize and see where we can fit things. Here are a few pics so far....and know that most of this has been moved around since I took the pictures.
Cereal is a staple in our home!
This picture was taken after half the boxes had been opened. We still had a lot to unpack!
The sad thing about all of this is that we used almost all of the weight restriction for one years worth of food! I think a family of 4 should be given a larger weight allowance, especially families who have two growing boys who eat us out of house and home! Thankfully, amazon ships to DPO addresses and we now have an amazon prime account.
Consumables are a blessing and a nightmare. Nothing like trying to tally how much tp you might use or how much cereal to get before nobody will eat it do to overload. Looks like you did well. Hopefully there will be enough fresh fruits and veggies to prepare sauces and freeze for later convenience and your consumables will compliment them perfectly! At least that part of life is over, and you gain so much time NOT SHOPPING for meal preparations. That part is lovely!
ReplyDeleteYes...the stress that is the consumables shipment. It looks like you did a good job, though!
ReplyDeleteAmazon is absolutely the best ever. In the states, I wondered why there were so many food items, and thought it was weird that people would buy those things online. Now I totally get it. I love being able to order fruit snacks for the boys lunches, or a package of peanut butter m&ms.
Malawi was our first consumables post. This time my number one requirement for bidding was NO CONSUMABLES! Seriously. 2nd was DPO, not pouch. Then and only then did I look at "important stuff" like schools. Food I thought we would really need is just sitting there getting dusty. And obviously I should have doubled the amount of TP ordered. Thank heavens for Amazon.
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