Earlier in the week I was reading Crystal’s post over at Money Saving Mom about her Eat from the Pantry Challenge for the month of January. I read through it the first time and thought, “that would never work for us.” My kids are picky eaters and if they could eat waffles every morning they would. When we run out of something they like, I don’t hear the end of it, until we are restocked. But then after thinking about it some, I thought, what am I so scared of? My kids? NO! I decided I’d give it a shot. We have meat in the freezer and plenty of food in the pantry. There are some things that we don’t eat because other things are more enticing to us at the time. In order to start cleaning out and save some money for January. I’ve decided to commit to this challenge. Baby steps of course. Here’s my plan:
1st: Have a family meeting to discuss the plan. My kids will have to learn to eat from our stockpile, but I think if they know the plan ahead of time, they will be able to adapt. We can even make a list of what we currently have that they like, so they can refer to it when they need to make a decision.
2nd: Attempt to make a menu plan. I’m not very good at this, but once I take inventory, I should be able to plan several dinners. This might even help me overcome my habit of standing in the kitchen at 4:30 trying to decide what we are having for dinner. I’m so bad about that.
3rd: Make a list of items we will need from the grocery store. ie: Milk, bread & produce. I will only be buying the daily essentials.
4th: Understand that we may not make it the entire month of January, but something is better than nothing.
5th: Break the news to my husband. Hopefully he’s reading this and I don’t have to verbalize it! 
Actually he’ll probably be the one to adapt the quickest.
Would you like to participate? I could use some support. I’ll post about how it’s going and let you know the challenges we’ve faced.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
sounds like an amazing plan to me! we will be moving in a couple months(not far just down the road) but this would help clear out my stock pile a little bit.(i probably have about 4 months of food stock piled up! haha
you mention about taking inventory i keep a running inventory at all times in my house! i tape a piece of notebook paper to each cabinet door and i have 3 sheets of paper taped tp the top of my chest freezer. when i take out or add in i just cross off the list or add to it. i’m adding a website i use alot to keep inventory on and they email me when something might be going out of date! which i love about never having to worry about it going to waste!
http://www.trackmyfoodstorage.com
good luck to all who try this i know i will be right there with you emptying my pantry too!
I may start doing at least the Freezer list. I wish I was that organized. Moving is a great motivation for cleaning out. Good Luck
the hardest part for me with the lists is to get hubby to actually mark something off when he uses it! wemoved in this place a year ago and i started the lists then(maybe once you use up your panrty the list will be easier when you restock!)