April Challenge: Food Purge

E. J. and I have declared 2014 as The Year of Less. Well, probably me more than him actually calling it that. In first three months of the year, we've done a really good job at sorting through our stuff and being honest that we don't really need a lot of our things anymore.

For example, last weekend we went through our coat closet and E. J. finally admitted to himself that he probably doesn't need his letterman jacket (oh, really?) from high school (he lettered in academics, which I didn't even know you could do).

I wish I had documented our progress thus far. One area that has been bugging me lately is the amount of food we have sitting in the freezers and our pantry. Rather than hoping it just goes away (which it hasn't seemed to for a couple of years) I decided to make a challenge out of it in hopes of keeping me accountable.

The rules are pretty simple. During the month of April my goal is to utilize as much food that we already have "in stock" without unnecessarily purchasing food that we don't need.

I'm only allowing myself a $50-75 budget per week at the grocery store since there are always items we buy each week that we go through in no time (fruit, milk, fresh veggies, etc.). I still haven't stamped out the details on the dollar amount since since there are often non-food items on any grocery list and how that will work. The less $$ spent, the better.

At the end of each week I will post our meals (dinners...since we usually have leftovers for lunch) from each day and my grocery receipt. I know you're excited about seeing our meals ;).

As as you can see, it's not like we're exactly starving around here...

Pantry

Deep freeze

 Freezer

Things I'm looking forward to with this challenge:

• Although I consider myself a pretty good weekly meal-planner, I'm excited/nervous to test my creativity when it comes to planning around what we have rather than planning around what I need to buy.
• Clearing out the clutter (again, see pictures above).
• Savings. I always spend more than $75 a week at the grocery store so this will definitely be a challenge.

Here goes the 30-day challenge!