Living Crunchy and..picking your battles?

I live in a "co-habitation" arrangement with my parents. No, I'm not a lazy 30 something who can't get her act together! We found it to be mutually beneficial on many levels. Financially it gives us all a lot more wiggle room, personally my son  home schools and my mother is able to do this. Also with three speical needs kids, it sometimes takes three adults to stay on top of them all! Plus many hands make light work, our house keeping arrangements work out better than if I was on my own, trying to do it all on my own. But it's not always an EASY arrangement, as any adult child who has ever resided with their parents knows all to well. There's always the inevitable power struggle, the stand for being seen as an ADULT and not longer a child and learning to find balance with people who were historically 'your boss' and are now your "ally and supprt." It can be done though, and we're hitting that balance fairly nicely.

But it does mean picking your battles at times.

For instance, our financial wiggle room is now better but we are not out of the woods as far as debt goes. We all have to watch our budgets pretty carefully. Now, I'm guilty in my grand schemes of crunchy idealism of trying to subject the family to bouts of healthy eating, healthy cleaning and healthy living that may strain the family budget (and ah...tastebuds). I've had to learn that I can talk and talk but some things are just going to remain the same. I will NEVER completely abolish the appearnce of snack foods in this house for instance. Chips, cookies, ice creams, sugar, kool-aid...they all march through here routinely and I have to accept that this will always be the case. I can limit the quanities that are consumed by myself and my son and my sisters even to some extent, but they will never be gone completely. That's just a fact of life since I do not have 100% control of the household grocery expenses. And.....I'm okay with it. It's a balance afterall. If I can get my folks on board with a MOSTLY low sugar and high protien diet for my autistic kid, I'm doing okay. They can make the choices for what they eat for themselves and that's okay too. We're adults.

I can not set myself on hard limits 100% of the time, and that goes I'm sure for any relationship you may be in, whether it's parents or spouses or adult children or even bosses/co-workers you are dealing with. We give and we take, we compromise. I get to limit the access to the video games...grandpa still gets to buy him the fun games he loves and be the fun grandpa he wants to be. I can implement small changes (getting everybody on MOSTLY whole grains...if they're going to eat grains) and those are important steps.

I guess I'm telling you guys this out of the need to self disclose. We don't practice our crunch 100% here because we're not all 100% on board with the program. And chances are the same will happen in your world. It's not the end of the world if that is the case..make what changes you can, as you can. It may take a while to get to that crunchy state of bliss, and maybe it will only ever effect you alone and not the rest of the house hold. But at least awareness has been raised, right?