Sonya Bateson: The foodbank is vital and needs our support

OPINION

I’ve always been an organised person.

Since having a child, though, that trait has kicked into overdrive.

I’m not sure whether it’s some long-dormant nesting instinct or whether it’s a product of my reduced financial means, but I’ve turned into a bit of a squirrel (à la hoarding food for the winter, not the nutty aspect. I hope).

I have storage containers of meticulously organised children’s clothing that I buy a year or two ahead of time in the end-of-season sales, at op shops, and on Trade Me.

My chest freezer is chocka-block with meat packs I’ve bought on special and divvied up into smaller portion sizes, bags of frozen veges, reduced-price bread buns, and batch-cooked meals such as ham soup frozen into smaller containers.

My Christmas gifts are all bought and stored away in separate cardboard boxes stacked in the home office.

It may seem excessive, but boy does all that organisation and squirrelling make life easier. As soon as my kid’s ankles start showing at the end of his pant legs, I can whip the next size up out of a container.

On a low-energy day, there are frozen meals ready to be heated up, or easy stuff that can be thrown together with minimal effort (stir fry, anyone?).

And you won’t be catching me doing any Christmas shopping in December when prices are high and crowds are manic, no siree.

Not only do all these things help me in times of stress, they also help me save money.

What’s interesting, though, is that these methods of reducing costs are also dependent on having money to spend in the first place.

Can’t buy a whole season’s worth of sale clothing if you’ve got no cash. Chest freezers need a considerable outlay and space to put them. Buying food in bulk can only happen if you’ve got room in your budget for extras and storage space. The same goes for early Christmas shopping.

I’m able to save money by squirrelling because I’m financially privileged enough to do so.

That’s a funny thought, isn’t it? To save money you need to have money.

For example, if you’ve got $50 to spend on groceries for the week, you’re not going to use $10 of that buying the cheapest (per roll) 12-pack of toilet paper. You’re going to buy the six-pack for $6, even though it’s more expensive by the roll because it’s the cheapest bag on the shelf, it’s enough for the week, and that $4 will buy two loaves of bread for the week’s lunches. Those loaves of bread were included in a three-for-$5 deal, but you don’t have room in your fridge-freezer for two extra loaves so you pay $2 a loaf instead of $1.66.

That’s a completely made-up example, but you get the point. Life can be far more expensive when you’re poor.

And it’s even worse when a big bill comes up. Maybe your car needs new tyres, or maybe your hot water cylinder sprung a leak. Suddenly, you’ve got to find money from … somewhere. And the only flexibility in a tight budget is how much you spend on food.

So, what do you do?

Well, for many people, one option is to ask a foodbank for help.

Was anyone surprised to learn that the Tauranga Community Foodbank has had a 33 per cent increase in food parcels compared to last year? Or that the Rotorua Salvation Army foodbank is helping support people who have never before asked for help, including workers and homeowners? I certainly wasn’t.

This year has been incredibly tough for, well, anyone who’s not wealthy.

Food is expensive. Petrol is expensive. Rents and mortgage repayments are expensive. And, while food and petrol prices feel to me like they’re easing somewhat, they’re still far higher than they were three to four years ago.

Struggle is now the norm for many of us who were comfortable a couple of years back. We’ve adapted to making hard choices about where to spend our paycheques and turned to cost-saving measures such as squirrelling and saving.

But for those who were already struggling, the cost-of-living crisis has turned a hard situation into an impossible one. Thankfully, the foodbank is one of the many wonderful agencies here in the Bay of Plenty that has stepped up to bridge the gap.

Without foodbanks, the vulnerable people in our communities – children, adults and the elderly – will go hungry. And that’s not okay.

The foodbank is vital. And it needs our support.

Sonya Bateson is a writer, reader and crafter raising her family in Tauranga. She is a Millennial who enjoys eating avocado on toast, drinking lattes and defying stereotypes. As a sceptic, she reserves the right to change her mind when presented with new evidence.