Our family and friends "group" has done well with the No-Spend/Low-Spend January challenge for the first 10 days of January.
In fact, I'd say we've all gotten pretty good with the "Use It Up" portion of Grandma's favorite quote!
Use it up, Wear it out,
Make it do, Or do without
Five households are participating in our group. We've been creating menus from what we have in our cupboards and freezers, packing lunches, making our own coffee drinks as much as possible and trying to buy only necessities like basic staples and cleaning supplies.
Eating down the cupboards and freezer this month also provides an additional benefit of reducing the possibility of food items going bad soon and needing to be discarded.
The first thing I did this month was check the "Use By" dates on all our boxes and canned goods up in the cupboard. Items that have expiration dates within 4 months were put on the lowest shelf to be used first.
In our house, what we don't eat on that shelf during January will be donated to a local food bank as -- if we don't eat it this month -- we probably won't eat it before it goes bad.
Reducing waste pays off! One of the daughters commented to the group that she had used a package of ground turkey in her freezer that she had been avoiding.
A while back she bought a couple of packages of ground turkey, cooked one, but found she didn't particularly like ground turkey.
Because of the challenge to reduce buying during January, she cooked a meal with the ground turkey and used up what probably would have gone bad.
What if you don't like the taste of something? There are alternate ways to use up food if you think about it creatively.
So for us this month, as far as spending goes...so far so good! How about you? Are you avoiding spending this month too?
Thanks for dropping by!
