Is it insanity or a new way of looking at things?

After the hustle and bustle of Christmas passed (BTW I got a Keurig machine – that thing rocks my socks…) and New Year’s slipped away – I was trying to adjust my pantry to fit things in (namely boxes of K –cups) and I was moving stuff around between our freezers and realized we could live off of what we currently had for a month…

Now I am pretty frugal and use coupons and shop with specials – but even so I end up spending between $75-90 every week on groceries…mainly due to coupons and sales…hey Chex cereal for $1.50 – load me up…Del Monte canned veggies for .30 cents each…throw them in my cart…

So all of this has ganged up on me…I have about 8 boxes of cereal…enough veggies to eat a can every day for then next three weeks, boxes of pasta and sleeves of Saffron rice starting at me when I open the doors…and don’t even get me started on the army of Chef-Boy-R Dee I have lining my shelves…

In addition I have chicken, shrimp, sausage, fish and a whole turkey in my freezer – a WHOLE turkey – do you know many meals a family of four can get out of a whole turkey…I won’t go all Forrest Gump (turkey noodle soup, turkey tetrazzini, hot turkey sandwiches, etc., etc., etc.) but it is A LOT…

So I have decided that January will be the month of $40 or less grocery weeks…I am going to attempt to spend no more than $40 a week for all of our household needs – I was going to set it lower – but we really love fresh fruit and veggies to snack on and well – heck enough to feed us for a week can cost $10 or more…add in bread and 2 gallons of milk a week and you are up to about $18 – thereby leaving just a bit over $20 for anything else we may need during the week

I do realize this will take a little bit of willpower from me not to stock up when I see a good deal…it may mean we run out of something and have to put off buying more for a bit of time…it may mean that by the end of January we are eating Pancakes every night (for some odd reason I have three unopened boxes of Hungry Jack pancake mix…must have been a sale + coupons…) and TC taking PB&J’s for lunch…(4 jars of peanut butter+ 3 jars of fancy homemade jelly) .

So far this week we have spent $12.12...but we are out of fruit and bread so I have to make a quick trip to the grocery tonight...

So we will see if I can actually pull this off or if I am a crumpled heap come Jan 31st whimpering “Please sir, let me use my coupons…”