Our Pantry is Empty! What We Learned From No Spend March

We survived a month of "no spending".  Overall we spent about $150 in groceries and only paid our regular expenses.  We didn't buy anything extra or spend any money on entertainment.  Although we weren't able to keep our weekly groceries under $20, we did pretty good.  Here are some of the things we learned through the month:

The Italian and Mexican shelves suffered the most!

• Things last a lot longer than we thought.  The whole month I thought we were going to run out of ketchup and my facial cleanser but we never did.  Turns out I was really bad at judging how much is left in the container.
• Meals can be easy, quick, and cheap and still taste really good.  We went back to our old favorite recipes and remembered why they used to be our favorites.  We didn't get bored at all although by the end of the month, I was craving more fresh vegetables.
• You can survive a month without peanut butter and all purpose flour but not tamari.  We ran out of all of these the first week but the tamari is the only one we bought in March.  
• The world doesn't end when you pull the last non-dairy milk carton from the closet.  I always have at least 4 or 5 cartons in the closet so that I never run out.  By the last week, we were on the last soy milk but it lasted and I didn't even have to skip a smoothie.
• Speaking of smoothies, it is fantastic having a month's worth of greens and bananas in the freezer.  I'm going to buy those in month-long quantities from now on instead of every week.
• Lemons and limes make your life happier.  We ran out of both mid-month and our meals suffered.  
• There is something very satisfying about seeing the food in your pantry actually decrease.  It made me just as happy as when I would see it fully stocked.

Overall it was a really good experience and worth the time and effort.  We saved a lot of money and learned what to buy and what not to buy.  There are a lot of pre-made sauce kind of things still sitting in the pantry which we obviously don't like so I am determined not to buy them ever again.  Bill and Kayleigh were very supportive through the whole thing and very patiently waited for April to arrive!  

March Grocery Challenge Update

Just to recap, our goal for this month was to spend $100 the first week and then $20 each of the remaining weeks.  Along with the groceries, we've tried to spend less on other things as well.  I didn't realize how much impulse buying I was doing lately until we tried this experiment.  So many times I've been tempted to run out and grab something but then I stop and think about if I really need it.  So far, every time the answer has been no.  There may be a few items that we end up buying next month but nowhere near what we would have bought if we weren't doing this.  So that is good and hopefully we've all broke some bad shopping habits.

As far as the grocery part of the challenge is going, it hasn't been as good as I hoped but not too bad.  On March 7th I sent my husband to the store with a very short list.  He didn't pay any attention to what he was spending but came back with $23.16 worth of food.  Even though that is over the budget, it isn't too bad.  We would have been well under except we discovered the first day of the challenge that we were out of tamari and that wasn't going to work for a month so he got that.  He also got 3 bags of cheddar cheese because it was on sale.  That will keep in the freezer so that's OK.

The beets and beet greens provided 3 side dishes for the week and there are still two beets in the fridge.  Nothing was thrown away this week so - Hurray!

On March 14th, my mom had asked us to run to a store in a neighboring town for her because that is the only place that carries the soy milk she likes.  That's when I made the terrible decision to just buy all our food there.  My list was so short that I thought it would be fine.

Well, all I can say is it's a good thing that list was so short (and that I forgot to get the salad dressing and Kayleigh had leftover rolls) or who knows what we would have paid!  Also, they didn't have Kayleigh's yogurt so we still ended up going to Meijer.  I'm having major buyer's remorse!  Our total came to $27.22 (including $1.79 for Palmolive to clean my husband's bike).  Hopefully we do a little better the rest of the month.

Here's the breakdown of our purchases:

3/7 all from Meijer
2 bunches of beets with greens                 $3.98
Yogurt                                                       $2.69
Mushrooms                                               $3.99
Ham                                                          $3.50
Tamari                                                      $3.00 (on sale)
3 bags of Cheddar                                     $6.00 (on sale)

3/14 from local grocery store except yogurt (Meijer)
Palmolive                                               $1.79
1 bag iceburg salad                                $2.49
2 bunches of broccoli                             $5.98
2 heads of cauliflower                            $5.98
Ham                                                        $3.00 (hmmm... surprisingly cheaper than Meijer)
2 loaves pumpernickel bread                 $5.98
Yogurt (Meijer)                                     $2.00 (on sale)

March Grocery Challenge

Instead of making New Year's resolutions like everyone else, I seem to always challenge myself in March instead.  Last year I picked several items such as drinking a glass of water every morning and parking in the back of the parking lot at work to do every day for a month.  This year I had already mapped out an exercise and food challenge but then I got a better idea.

Now that I don't have to spend all my spare time studying, I seem to have a lot of extra time. Through February I used most of that time to declutter our house.  When I first mentioned this, Bill and Kayleigh looked at me like I was crazy because they didn't think there was anything left I could get rid of.  But there was!!  I cleaned every room, closet, and drawer upstairs.  The basement still hasn't been touched - maybe next year!  But during this process I realized that we really have a crazy amount of food.

I have two big pantries in the kitchen and 3 other cabinets and a drawer that we keep food in.  We also have the refrigerator/freezer as well as a separate freezer downstairs.  All of these are packed full but somehow that wasn't enough space so I took over the closet in one of the spare bedrooms as well.  Is this really necessary?

So, to help us get through some of this food as well as to save us some money (college is creeping up quicker than we'd like) I came up with the idea of not grocery shopping for a month, kind of.  We are used to eating a lot of fresh vegetables and we each have specific foods we rely on that I didn't want to eliminate.  It was meant to cut back our stash, not make us miserable and unhealthy.  So I decided that we would have a $100 grocery trip to get enough of some items that we use all the time for the month.  We weren't allowed to stock up on random things though.  Although Bill and Kayleigh both readily agreed to this challenge, I didn't feel it was fair to make Kayleigh change her lunches.  Every day she takes the same lunch (warning - it is pictured below and will make all vegans scream in horror - I've learned to just not think about it!).  Plus we can't live without any fresh vegetables for a month.  So each week we can spend up to $20 for her lunch items and 2-3 fresh produce items.  If there is enough money we can also use this for bread items depending on what is planned for the week.

Earlier this week I planned out a month worth of meals and the grocery list for the beginning of the month.  Today we went to Sam's Club, Aldi and Meijer.  Here are our results:

5 bunches of bananas that will be frozen once they ripen for my breakfast smoothie, 2 bags of flour tortillas, 2 2-pound bags of carrots, 1 bag tostada shells, and a 5-pound bag of Cuties.

5 boxes of hard shell taco shells, 4 soy milks, 3 almond milks, lasagna noodles, jumbo pasta shells.

15 pounds of baking potatoes, 10 pounds onions, 5 oz baby arugula, 2 8-oz bags of baby spinach, 1 pound baby spinach, 1 pound kale medley (all greens are frozen for my smoothies), 1 head iceberg lettuce,

2 loaves wheat bread, 2 baguettes, 2 pounds garlic (there were 21 bulbs in there!).

For Bill - granola bars that he eats for breakfast and iceberg salad.

And here is Kayleigh's horror of a lunch:

Brioche buns, yogurt (from a cow) and (yes, that is a deli bag) ham, What can you do?

Those are Kayleigh's favorite buns and they don't always have them so we bought one bag for this week and one bag to freeze.

Our total spent was:

Aldi                 $20.23
Sam's Club      $48.54
Meijer              $35.46

TOTAL           $104.23

Not bad.  If we hadn't got the second bag of buns we would have been good but that is money we will not have to spend another week.  I was hoping Sam's would have big bags of greens but they didn't.  They did have all that garlic, though, that wasn't on my original list.

So we are off to a good start.  We'll see how this goes!