My Life as a Monkey

A good friend of mine once told me that her husband's philosophy about buying shredded cheese was "there's some monkey somewhere shredding that cheese and we're paying them to do it, so why don't we be the monkey?"

Made a lot of sense to me! Especially when I noticed that buying the cheese shredded vs. in a block is nearly double the price. So I tried shredding our cheese at home, and you know what I discovered? It takes about 2 minutes for me to shred an entire 8 oz. block, and if I buy the even less expensive 16 oz. block, I'm done in less than 5 minutes. I save my family at least $3.00 per week by being the monkey that shreds the cheese. And it really tastes so much better! It melts more smoothly too.

There are other "monkey tasks" I've taken on, such as buying large containers of snacks and portioning them into individual  baggies, grilling more chicken than we'd ever need for a single meal and then slicing it up and freezing it to make my own "short cuts chicken," etc. And then I don't feel bad if I take a little bit of that money I'm saving and buy a delicious bottle of wine!