January has been a little rough overall for us.  For more details see this post from yesterday!  But today is the most “normal” day so far this month. It is a Saturday; we have snow on the ground and everyone is home. The goal for today is to finish putting away Christmas, unpack the camper and general catch up from the month of December.

I want to focus on the pantry challenge for this post.  This is the third year that I have attempted to participate in the pantry challenge.  I watched others do the pantry challenge in 2022.

I am going to continue or use the same rules this year for spending that I have in the past.  I am only going to buy things as we run out of them and need them.  I will continue to receive our subscribe and save items that are the best price from Amazon.   To be completely transparent, here is what I have already spent in the month of January, $10 at Aldi’s, I have a current order for pick up at Walmart for around $80 and finally Matt and Lily, will be picking up items from Costco today. I am going to estimate those at around $50. My subscribe and save is $105.46. I also had already purchased an order from Azure Standard as well.  So now that I see all the numbers on paper, my overall goal for the three months of the pantry challenge will be to spend less than $900 on groceries which is one month of our current budget.
I have decided to provide a little more structure to what food we are eating so that we can work on eating what food we have instead of just eating what we normally do and then buy more.  I worked hard over the summer to get lots of food in the freezer and to fill the canning pantry. I am working on keeping my kitchen pantry stocked and organized.  I was able to move items to the kitchen pantry so now I have a better idea of what we have and what we are using.

Here is a final list of the guidelines I would like to stick to during the months of January, February and March

1.Purchasing items that we are completely out of that are staples such as diary as well as buns or other items that will help use items we already have. Total spending for the three months of the 2025 will be less than $900
2. Use at least one “meal/meat portion of the meal” from the stand-up freezer each week. (This is where most of the meals are)
3. Use at least 3 jars a week from the canning pantry. (This can include lunches)
4. Use one item a week from the connivence freezer in my room. (This will also help me get a good handle on what exactly is in this freezer as well.
5. Each Monday after menu planning provide a list of how I followed the guidelines for the week.

Since the pantry challenge has been going on for a total of 11 days but we have only been home the past 6 days here is the list for that time period.
1. Current spending is at $206 with Amazon order and pick up order from Walmart. I will add Azure and Costco to the report on Monday. ($694 left for three months)
2. Fail for the week but we will be using several prepared meals for next week.
3. 7 jars from the canning pantry this week.
4. We pulled out and used 2 rolls of sausage from the connivence freezer this week.

Are you participating in the pantry challenge?  What are your rules?