I thought that I would blog about our efforts to spend no money except what is absolutely necessary for the next 5 weeks.
It seemed like an easy challenge when we first started, and then doubt started to trickle in – Will my husband really give up his chips and candy? Can we live without soda? Those were sort of no-brainers and in the end will not be so bad, but then came trickling in the thoughts, but we are running out of everything…. I need oatmeal, tamari sauce, onions, peanut butter and the list went on and on.
Then I stopped and thought about it, do I really need all of that? What can I make for menu’s this week that do not require some of those items? So that is my task today is to make menu’s for the week that use what we have on hand as much as possible, and do not require large amounts of purchases.
The other thing that makes this challenge tough but even more important is we are on a special diet here. No Gluten, no sugar, and for the most part no meat or dairy. We do eat some meat and dairy but since we have none now we will not be this week.
We have food probably enough to last for 2 weeks or more without buying anything but rice milk and fruit. So the challenge becomes working with what we have to create a menu. I also need to do a large amount of baking this week, to supplant the junk food tooth my husband has lately. I have been learning to do a lot more Gluten Free baking lately so that should not be so hard.
So tomorrow I will try to take the time to post our 2 weeks worth of menu’s based on what we have on hand, and what my shopping list for 2 weeks looks like. I do know there are something I will need to get, but I am going to try to keep my list down to a minimum.
If any of you would like to join us in seeing how much money you can put in savings in the next 5 weeks then you can either comment here on this blog, or you can sign up at the forums and post on this thread.