Eating From the Pantry Challenge...final week

We have had an interesting month here. Eating from the pantry has proven to be quite successful, despite the fact that we have spent $40 over our "budget" of $80 for the month of January. Both my hubby and I were ok with what we bought, and what we spent.

We managed to clean out the big freezer, and it's empty now, waiting for our yearly beef purchase. All the meat has been rotated into the "little" freezer (above the fridge) and I cleaned the pantry shelves off, and went through some of the food, giving away what I KNEW we wouldn't ever eat. **chalk that up to "What on earth were you thinking buying that stuff?"**


All in all, it's been a GREAT experience here, doing this. We are actually going to continue this through the month of February as well, only buying fresh produce, milk, and cheese until we need to get other things. I will be taking photos later in the week, once I get the fridge cleaned out, so you can see what we have used up. I would encourage anyone to try this for a week or two, or even a month. It's been amazing to see what we really had that was lurking behind other things, forgotten. As a matter of fact, if you do a lot of canning, I would suggest doing that often...as you never know what could happen:

**Apparently, these tomatoes didn't seal correctly...**


I really hope that I can only buy the produce and milk even through February, since we still have a freezer full of meat, and a fridge full of meat that is thawing to be used this week. Stay with me as I work to continuing this challenge for as looooooong as possible!