Here are a few more confessions from my daily life - our kitchen:
I let my kids eat food that has fallen on the floor. Generally I only let this slide in our own home, which may not really be any more sanitary - but for a little disclaimer, I don't usually let them eat food that has fallen outside or in public places. Still, if my kid dumps her cup of dry cereal on our floor, she'll probably still eat it after she cleans it up for example. There are probably a lot worse examples, but right now we don't have any pets and I keep things relatively clean, so go ahead girls - if you want it, have at it, I'd rather not waste it. I do the same thing myself.
I know all the rules about bacteria and stuff, but I still have my girls put their unfinished cups of milk into the refrigerator. Milk is expensive and my girls drink a lot of it. So, if they don't finish - into the fridge it goes to be enjoyed later, backwash and all. The nice thing about this is (and they do this with water too because they are obsessive about their water being cold) that whenever they are thirsty, they don't bug me - they just open the fridge and drink whatever is in their cup. At least this means that a cup of milk in not often in there more than 24 hours if ever even lasting that long. And, it seems better to me than luke-warm sippy cups of milk lying around the house - which is not uncommon to families with toddlers. The girls stay hydrated, we waste less, and I'm happy.
I keep the left-over half eaten bananas too. Occasionally my girls won't finish a banana. So, I take it and cut off the end where they have bitten into it. Then I slice it up and put it into a container in the freezer. Again, I just don't like to waste it. Frozen banana coins are really yummy - I'd rather eat banana that way. But, most of the time they get tossed into smoothies. If they ever didn't get eaten, maybe I'd defrost them and make banana bread, but I just can't make myself throw out a perfectly good portion of banana.
I do all of these things. You are not alone.
Posted by: Kate Coveny Hood | January 24, 2009 at 08:39 PM
Tricia - I do all three of these things too. I think there are a lot of these types of things we moms do, even though many parenting directions say to do otherwise. We do what we have to in order to stay sane, and what makes sense in our own homes. And sometimes it just means breaking with the experts!
Posted by: allison | January 25, 2009 at 12:46 PM