2013 No Spend Challenge - Clothing

Now that I've laid out what we spent last year, you can see that there are a few areas we can really cut back. Some of you might think our allowance of $6000 is excessive (which I think too - but DH won't cut back), but at least any of it that is not spent is sitting in a savings account. I usually only get $100/month in cash from my allowance and put the rest in my savings. DH does the same. So really we have a good chunk in extra savings accounts if the "household" ever needs it for an emergency.

 

But the one category I really want to cut back on is spending, specifically online shopping, and specifically clothing. We have a lot of clothes. Just this morning as I was getting dressed for work, I needed to select a pair of shoes to go with my khaki pants. And of course, there are several pairs of tan/khaki shoes in my closet to choose from, in addition to a few brown pairs too that I could wear. I really only need one pair of light colored shoes to wear with my light colored pants. I'm probably not going to throw out perfectly good shoes, but I can put my foot down and quit buying any more shoes. Or any more pants. Or any more shirts. And I certainly don't need another Tshirt in my entire life, with hundreds on hand already.

 

So our challenge this year is to not purchase any clothing. I'm debating whether that should include free clothing. I'm thinking it should include any clothing whether it was paid for, or free. I can just pass on those $10 GC for free clothes at Victoria's Secret, and not reach out my hand to get that free Tshirt at events.

 

In addition to stopping any more clothing from coming into our home, we need to continue to purge excess items we have but no longer wear. Part of our challenge is to empty every single closet in our home this year and only put back the stuff we use. We already did that to our front hall closet and now the floor is actually empty! Prior to the cleanout, we had a large bucket of stuff that took up four square feet of space. The stupid thing is, we didn't touch that bucket for over ten years. We didn't miss anything in it.

 

So this year, even though I know there will be items I'll want to get, I won't.

Eat From the Pantry Challenge

One of the happenings going on in blogworld is the Eat From the Pantry Challenge. Its a call to the couponers who've stockpiled and now have an excess inventory of food in the freezer, cupboards, pantry and fridge. The object is to stay out of the stores, and make your meals from the stockpile to use up that food and make room for fresh stuff. Well, I certainly need to do that. Our freezers are bursting and the stockpile shelves are overflowing onto the floor in bags. So for the next month or so, I'm going to try to stay out of Publix and send dear to buy salad fixins and milk. I suggested we use our nonfat dry milk (NFDM) survival supply but that didn't fly. I told him he wouldn't even be able to tell the difference once it was mixed up and refrigerated. I might try that a bit later, a taste test to see. I bet you can't wait to see how that turns out.

 

Anyway, I did an inventory of the freezers and the pantry to make a list of items we have. This is most items but if I have only one of something like mustard I didn't list it. One thing for sure is we're going to be having lots of chicken salads coming up. We've been having ham on our salads because its been on sale a lot, plus makes for nice breakfast and sandwiches - but with 32 lbs of chicken breasts, we need to eat it up. Another great meal idea is to use up all the smoked sausage in chili and hot dishes, we need to use up a ton of tomato sauce and paste too. Here's the list of items now so hopefully in a month it will be considerably smaller.

 

	Freezer	1/3/2010			Pantry
qty	item			qty	item
32	pounds of chicken breasts			34	Gatorade bottles
9	Steamfresh meals			26	Cereal boxes
6	Echerd smoked sausage			15	8 oclock coffee
4	Barber Stuffed Chicken			15	canned dog food
4	Hot Pockets			12	tomato sauce paste
4	Green Giant froz veg, boxes			10	Salad dressings
4	Green Giant froz veg, bags			10	A1 sauce
3	TGIF chicken wings value pk			10	Fisher snacks
3	Simply Potatoes hashbrowns			9	rice a roni mix
3	Mrs Pauls fried clams			9	pasta noodles
3	Seasations fish fillets (2)			9	Mt Dew liters
3	Lotus vietnamese			8	Dog snacks
2	Starbucks ice cream pint			7	soup
2	Phillips crab cakes (8)			6	Hormel Completes
2	petite steaks			6	alexia snacks
2	Totinos pizza			6	Dog food, 20 lb
1	Bertolli pasta meal			6	granola bars box
1	TGIF spinach dip			5	crackers
1	Morningstar burgers			5	black beans
1	Mrs Pauls fish fillets (8)			4	Texas Toast croutons
1	TGIF potato skins			4	BC potatoes mix
1	pound shrimp cooked			4	Roasted Peanuts
1	bratwurst (5)			4	BBQ
				4	Peanut Butter
				4	mac cheese
				3	Mayo salad dressing
				3	Bushs baked beans
				3	Salsa
				3	Wing sauce
				3	granola nut clusters
				3	12 pk soda
				2	Log Cabin Syrup
				2	Honey
				2	Tostitos chips
				2	GM fruit snacks
				2	refried beans
				2	Bread crumbs
				2	Soy sauce
				1	Spag sauce
				1	velveeta lb
				1	rotel
				1	marinade