Using Up Our Stockpile

I had an unexpected vacation this week due to snow (and looking at the forecast, might unfortunately be getting another one this week). For two days I sat around and did nothing but watch tv, write some articles for eHow, and read blogs, which was enjoyable for two days, but by day three, I was bored. That, coupled with the fact that my house needed some organization, led me to clean out my cupboards and go through my stockpile.

As I was doing that, I realized that our clutter problem is not just with stuff around the house, but also food and hygiene products. As I was cleaning, I had to throw away about $30 worth of food that had expired. I’ve known for a long time we probably weren’t going to eat it—it was stuff only one of us liked, but not stuff we’d make for just one of us—and I should have been more proactive about donating it, but I wasn’t. This motivated me to go through and remove any item I didn’t think we would use before it expired. I did the same for the hygiene stockpile. I ended up with three bags filled with items to be donated, in addition to the bag of items I had purchased specifically to donate to the food bank. It’s good to donate, but it’s bad to have that much stuff just sitting around my house.

As a result of my cupboard and shelf organization, I came up with a couple plans.
1. I will use $10 each month to get as many items as I can for the food bank. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s what we can spare. Plus, I think that between sales and coupons, I can make that $10 go a long way.
2. We need to use up some of our stockpile. Stockpiling items we use when they’re on sale is a great way to save money, but only if actually use those items. If they go to waste, we wasted food and money. So for the rest of the month, we have only $50 to spend on food. This will include the $4 we spent at Olive Garden today (the rest was covered by a giftcard) and the $3.88 cents I spend when my coworkers and I go to the gas station for lunch each Friday (we really go for the fancy establishments), but it won’t include the four mystery shop meals (three suppers for both of us and one lunch for just Josh) unless we go over the limit they’ll reimburse us for. Hopefully that doesn’t happen. I’ve planned our suppers for the month, and we have everything we need for those except ¼ of hamburger we’ll need at the end of the month. Pretty much all we’ll need should be perishable items like milk, eggs, bread, yogurt, fruits, etc. However, if roasts and lean hamburger go on sale in the next two weeks, I’ll break my $50 budget to stock up on them, but I don’t think that will happen. They shouldn’t be on sale again until March or April, at least not a huge sale. By spending only $50 for the rest of the month on food, this is a great way for us to save money, and it’s something I think we can modify a bit to carry on into March as well. This will put as at an even better pace for paying off our credit card bill by the time Josh’s semester is over!