Note that this is NOT a picture of my pantry....a girl can dream, right? ;)
Yesterday
on the facebook page I mentioned that I was doing some freezer and pantry
inventory and planning on doing a challenge.
This challenge basically is a commitment to using the products I already
have at home, on hand from my freezer or pantry, and doing little to no
shopping. Several of you showed some
interest in joining up with me as we take on this challenge so I thought I’d
get us started!
To
start, let’s talk basics. If you’re a
relatively serious couponer like me, then you probably have a pretty good
stockpile of essentials--several boxes of cereal, canned vegetables, spaghetti
sauce, etc. The very first thing you
need to do to get ready for the challenge is to take inventory of all of your
freezer and pantry items….I know, I know—not fun! But, you’ll feel so much better once you have
it all organized and know what you have!
Now, I
don’t have a big, roomy, beautiful pantry like the one at the top of this post. Rather, I just have 3 kitchen cabinets that I
use as the pantry. Because my storage
area is so small, it’s very important that I keep it organized and clean (which
is not always the case). Even though it
was mostly organized, some of the items still tend to get buried at the back of
the cabinets, so I had to take everything out!
I started by writing all of my pantry items down on a sheet of paper
making sure to write down the amount I had of that item as well….For example, I
had 15 jars of spaghetti sauce and 31 boxes of cereal! Woah!
Here are some pictures of my organized pantry (cabinets)...and yes, ALL my food is stored here. I don't keep cereal boxes under my kid's beds! HaHa!
Next, I
took on the freezers. We have the
side-by-side freezer on our refrigerator inside the house, and then we also
have a small chest freezer out in the garage.
I went through both of them writing down the items and quantities as
well. I found so much meat that I had
pretty much totally forgotten about!
Once I had
my inventory list, I sat down at the computer and broke it into categories:
·
Breakfast
·
Lunch
·
Snacks
·
Dinner
·
Drinks
·
Meats
Then,
from my categories I planned my menu. I
was able to come up with 34 separate supper meals! Which, if it was broken down, it would be
even more meals than that because some of the meals on the menu I have enough
items to repeat them several times!
Now, I’m
not trying to pretend that this is not time consuming, because it is. It took me probably about 4 hours to do all
of the above! But, now I have a menu
with over a month’s worth (maybe two month’s worth) of food that will come
directly from our stockpile! That means
almost NO shopping--which also means saving money!
As I’ve
talked about on the blog before, we use the cash method of budgeting for each
week. I keep $75 cash to pay for
anything that I do while I’m out and about (other than gas). That means grocery shopping, stops for
drinks, post office, etc. Once I’ve used
up that money then I can’t shop anymore until the next week.
My husband and I will be celebrating our anniversary at the end of this month, so I’m hoping to save most of my weekly cash budget (for the whole month) for spending money on our trip! We ended up having some unforeseen expenses this month with plumbing issues and some other stuff. And because we refuse to use credit cards, we need to save up a little to be able to feel okay about spending something a little extra on the trip.
Now, I
know we’ll still have to stop and get fresh items such as milk, cheese, fruits
& veggies, and bread, but with most of our ingredients already being in the
house our expenses should be much lower for the month!
So,
here’s my plan. I plan to post any
shopping trip that I have to make to pick up groceries and keep a record of my
spending for you all to keep up with….much like I did on my last shopping freeze. I can also post a few of my pantry recipes if
there is any interest. Let me know if
you’d like to read more on my menu plans, and if you’d like to join me in the
challenge please comment below with what your individual game plan is!
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