Preparing For 14 Days Of No Spending

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A 14 Day No Spending Challenge is a fantastic way to save some money, use up what is in your pantry, and give your wallet a little breathing room!

Organized Home has a some nice inventory worksheets for getting yourself ready for this challenge:

Printable Pantry Organizer where you can list what you have in the pantry

Printable Freezer Inventory List where you can list what you have in the freezer

Printable Weekly Menu Plan

Printable Shopping List (for those of us who need to go get milk, eggs, and fresh produce before the challenge starts!)

Here are some tips to get you ready!

 

1. We need to menu plan so we are not tempted to go out to eat and be running to the store.  This is one one of my worst money wasting habits!  I get overwhelmed when the kids are whining and fighting because they are hungry and I failed to prepare.  One purpose of this challenge is to use up what you have and not to be buying more therefore saving you money!  
2. However, my advice before menu planning is to organize your pantry.  (We will actually plan our menus tomorrow after doing the next few steps.) If you know what is in your pantry, you can plan meals based off of the food  you already have, saving you a lot of money.  If you are a coupon user or shop the sales, you probably have some items in there that you have gotten very reasonably.  However, if you never cook that stuff and it expires, it really wasn’t a good deal to start with!  If you did our 31 Days of Decluttering In December, your pantry should be fairly clean and organized.  However if you didn’t, quickly clean and wipe down your kitchen table and get to work.  Here are some tips to help you!  It’s not as overwhelming as you think it will be and can save you a lot of money.  
3. After completing the pantry, move to the refrigerator.  We also recently cleaned and organized this during the Decluttering In December challenge.  If you didn’t, make sure your table is cleaned off again and get started.   Keep your grocery list with you in case you clean it and find you only have a 1/2 gallon of milk!  That probably won’t last you 14 days.
4. After the refrigerator, it’s time to go tackle your freezer.  The freezer is the same concept as the pantry and refrigerator.  Take out your items, group the like items together, and if something is freezer burnt throw it out!  One tip I have in a chest type freezer is to use a cardboard box (diaper boxes work great) to organize frozen veggies, cheeses, or other like items.  Totes work great for items that you have a lot of such as harvested produce that you’ve frozen, a tote of hamburger if you have your own beef, etc.  I have a box in our freezer for frozen peaches that I put up in the fall, another tote for our sweet corn, etc.  It makes it much easier for me to find that stuff when I’m digging in it.

Tomorrow I will give you some meal planning suggestions to prepare for this No Spending challenge.  Cleaning the pantry, refrigerator, and freezer are plenty of projects for today.  Don’t give up!  Do one at a time and enlist help from your family.  My kids actually like finding all the cans of tuna and making a tower or dumping macaroni into the lock and lock container.  You can do it!