Cold & rainy. Blah!

No money spent, yay!

I'm trying to work on the amount of money we've been spending on groceries. This is really difficult for me & something I sad I wasn't gonna touch this year. I changed my mind.

We eat mostly organic, not much processed, and lots of fresh fruits & veggies. I'm not really willing to change what we eat - health is too important to set aside for money as far as I am concerned! However, we're averaging $500/mth in groceries for the 3 of us (based on the last 6-ish months). That's actually quite a bit. (Granted, we aren't eating out much, so of course our budget is gonna go a little higher, BUT!, not that much.) I've never had to budget groceries (or anything for that matter) so I never had a clue what we spent. A week or so ago we started looking at the categories of spending to see the difference we've made this year & there was the big ol' chunk of grocery pie (we had it up on a pie chart). MAN! In December we spent over $700 in groceries. Yes, you read that right! Granted, that was all the family meals, the special holiday goodies, the work parties, etc, but still $700?! Ridiculous!

So, I'm trying to cut out all the extra grocery trips. If we need milk, fine, but running to the store to buy milk & walking out with bags of stuff can't keep happening. I'm not good being out of something. I hate not being able to cook what I want 'cause I'm missing an ingredient that has no substitute, or not being able to eat what I'm craving 'cause it was finished off last week. *BUT* I need to learn to either stock up or suck it up.

The longest I think I can go w/out a trip for fruits & veggies is 2 weeks. So, every 2 weeks I can stock up on fruits, veggies, eggs, and dairy products. I'm gonna try to stock up on all the dry goods, meats, toiletries, etc. once month. In between those times we're gonna have to learn to suck it up. (The exception being if we run completely out of milk or fresh veggies.)
So far we're off to a good start... But this weekend we'll have to make a produce/dairy trip so it'll be my first test. Will I pass??? Plus, Luke & Kasen will be at home all day Thurs & Fri next week, so they'll eat who knows what... ack! ;)