February Pantry Challenge

Coupons. The word strikes fear and trembling into the hearts of many. It gets the rest of us does her all excited. Last week, in my own personal record, I saved $74 and only spent $36. It was so fun!! And as one who generally does all of her shopping at a place where I have to bag my own groceries, it was quite luxurious being able to go into a store where someone else is in charge of that and then pushes the cart out to the car and unloads the groceries in the rain while I strapped in the kids. The kids got cookies, and I didn't have to find a place to stash the shopping cart when it was over. Beautiful! Like Mexico all over again. Meanwhile, the groceries I purchased would have cost me about $100 (on that trip), so the only way I can afford to shop that luxuriously is to clip coupons.

This post isn't about coupons though. It's about what happens when you open your pantry to discover 13 boxes of cereal, 12 bags of Goldfish crackers, 7 salad dressings... the indulgence seems a little sinful. And I only have so much space in my little house. I'm about ready to make a curtain to cover the mountain of food like my great-grandma had to do when they acquired 100 pounds of potatoes during the Great Depression. At this point, I think we could wait one out on Doritos alone.

That is why I've decided to do a Pantry Challenge this month. My goal is to spend as little as possible on groceries this month and plan my menu entirely around what we already have. This will accomplish several things.

1) We will save some money this month on food

2) We will use up some of our surplus

3) It will force me to get creative

4) I don't know about the rest of the family, but just thinking about it I am already more thankful for the abundance God has provided.

Instead of boring you all with a weekly menu blogpost, I will post the week's menu in the sidebar. That way if you care, you can read it. If you don't you can just read the rest of the blog. I'm excited to see what this challenge will do to my heart, my pantry and my grocery budget.

PS This means no couponing this month unless it's freebees, so there might be some whining involved.