Time, Money, and Energy Budgets

Budgeting often refers to money, sometimes refers to energy (though frequently this is in the context of living with chronic illness^[1]), and sometimes refers to time. All three of these budgets play an important role in caregiving and especially in cooking as a caregiver. Consider these three budgets as a triangle:

Each of these three triangles looks different because each of the budgets is different. As is also the case in life, the amount of time, money, and energy people have varies and the triangles, like life, come in different shapes and sizes. Your budgets triangle is unique to you and may look quite different from those around you. Want to figure out what your budgets are? Great!

Time

An individual time budget comes from two main sources: the total amount of time in a day (24 hours) and week (7 days/168 hours) and the responsibilities that have to fit in that time. For instance, one day may include: work, pet care, laundry, commuting, verifying a bill payment went through, checking in with a friend, and caregiving. This could leave several hours left uncommitted or a scant few minutes. You know best what demands on your time exist! How long does laundry take? Is it reasonable to make phone calls while commuting? Does your pet care happen in 10 short 2 & 3 minute bursts throughout the day? All of these are things to consider in your time budget.

Money

Possibly the most practiced budget of the three, this is exactly how it sounds! How much money is spent on groceries, snacks, food out, etc. This is also personal — does coffee out count as food? Is there a different budget category for “treats” or “social time”? How you answer this question is unique to you and is a perfectly fine answer.

Energy

Your energy budget is unique to you, likely varies, and may be hard to quantify. If considering your daily or weekly energy is new to you, it may take some time before it feels comfortable or even accurate to assess your energy. That’s ok, starting something new can feel weird. It may help to start by thinking about it at the far ends of your personal energy spectrum, by considering a low-energy day and a day where your energy felt it met or even exceeded the many demands on your time. This can be a helpful place to start working out your personal measure of energy. Maybe it’s a scale from 1-10, maybe it’s out of 5 stars, maybe you have another measure! However it makes sense to you is the most important part here.

Much credit to Christine Miserandino and her idea of “spoon theory” when talking about energy in the context of chronic illness and/or disability (read her excellent piece here).

Ok but what does this have to do with cooking?

Cooking takes time, money, and energy! Finding your balance of those, especially as a caregiver, can help make cooking fit better. Let’s use salads to illustrate the way these different budgets come together. Nothing crazy, just lettuce, tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, croutons, cheese, chicken, and dressing.

Lettuce

A whole head of lettuce may cost less than buying bagged, pre-washed lettuce, but it takes more time and energy to turn into something fitting for a salad. It may also be more lettuce than is needed for one night’s dinner which means planning for storage and use later in the week, before the lettuce gets soggy. Buying pre-washed lettuce, especially already cut to size, may cost more money per pound but the savings on time spent preparing or energy spent properly storing and planning future use are also budgets to consider.

Tomatoes

Cutting larger tomatoes into bite-size pieces may take more time than you want to spend, even saving time by splitting cherry or grape tomatoes in half rather than dicing a larger tomato. Fresh tomatoes rarely come pre-cut by themselves, so spending more money may not result in much time savings. If tomatoes are important to you in your salad, this may impact choices about the other ingredients to account for the time spent preparing tomatoes. Or maybe your right choice is to use whole grape tomatoes!

Hard boiled eggs

Making hard boiled eggs is few steps but is more time-sensitive than cutting up lettuce or tomatoes. Once the eggs are on the stove in hot water, stepping away for longer than the eggs are meant to cook could result in the eggs overcooking, maybe even making them inedible. The time required to cook hard boiled eggs is also not limited to the time in the pot on the stove, it also includes peeling them afterwards. Having a comfortable place to sit and peel eggs, such as at a table, may mean be a lower use of energy and if that task can happen while having a conversation, the time used may be of less concern, especially because hard boiled eggs can be prepared in advance. Buying already cooked and peeled hard-boiled eggs at the grocery store could mean significant time and energy savings, especially if there is a significant risk of needing to step away from the stove during cooking.

Croutons

If you have ready-made croutons that you like, shelf stable croutons can be a significant time and energy savings compared to making your own! Having something on hand, taking just a moment to open and add as a salad topping takes very little time and energy.

Cheese

Shredded cheese compared to a block of cheese and shredding at home is often a small difference in cost, so this may be more influenced by other cooking plans. Is there another recipe planned that could use the same already shredded cheese? Would a block of cheese be more convenient for a snack later in the week? Does choosing one type of cheese give you more flexibility than another — cheddar versus mozzarella, for instance? This may be more of an energy choice, especially mental energy, than time or money.

Chicken

Grocery store chicken comes in many forms: already seasoned, cooked, and cut into strips; deli style; raw in whole form; raw and boneless; marinated and ready to cook; canned; frozen variants of already cooked; many forms. Your time, money, and energy budgets can be a helpful guide in navigating these choices as well as your preferences for chicken on salad. If you have a particular seasoning you strongly prefer, the already seasoned or already marinated options may be easily eliminated as choices. If you know that baking chicken in the oven will make the kitchen uncomfortably warm and adds cost in the form of air conditioning, the already cooked options may be your preference. Similar to buying the whole head of lettuce, storing leftover chicken (whether raw or cooked) may also be a budget consideration in the form of time and energy. If you have a great crock pot preparation method for chicken and are planing to use the same style of chicken in multiple recipes this week, that could shape your decision the opposite way that baked chicken would.

Dressing

Bottled or homemade? This may be a matter of opinion which is easier to prepare and may also be influenced by frequency of use, the time and energy cost of storing bottles in the refrigerator, various preferences by different eaters, how long any given salad dressing stays good, even ease of serving from different bottle styles (flip cap vs screw top, squeeze bottle vs free flowing, using a spoon).

Bonus round

Which store is best for this week’s shopping? Will you shop yourself or use grocery pickup/delivery? Can everything be purchased at one store or will multiple trips be necessary? Are the savings worth multiple stores? When is there time to go grocery shopping?

If this feels overwhelming, you’re not alone. This is the whole reason Caregiver Cooking exists, to help navigate the huge task that is feeding yourself and others. There are tools here to help, ranging from the Weekly Food Planner to the newsletter. I invite you to come along, check out what’s here, and see what might help support you!

Citations:

1. Staff. Cleveland Clinic. What Is the Spoon Theory Metaphor for Chronic Illness? 2021 Nov 15. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/spoon-theory-chronic-illness