Pantry Purge Update

After checking out some of your blogs, I started to feel embarrassed.  I thought our food stockpiles were somewhat normal.  My mother has a big freezer in her laundry room along with extra shelving for those items that are "on deck" and are waiting for a home.

Jay's parents have an extra mini fridge for drinks and quite possibly a deep freezer or two in the garage or basement.  (I'm not allowed to go in either.)  Also, Jay's Pawpaw has an extra refrigerator in his garage.  An abundance of food is normal right?

Well not according to your pictures.  Some of you (who have more people than me to feed) aren't working with the space I have to work with.  Quite frankly my excess is embarrassing. 

Warning - I took pictures of most of the places I have food in the house. This blog is going to be very picture heavy.

Jay thinks the cabinets are beginning to look a bit sparse.  I haven't been to Sams Club in a while nor have I shopped at the store with my mind on stockpiling. 

Okay so I'm cheap and by Big K (the Kroger generic) soda.  Jay loves orange and grape soda and the generic tastes the same.  And I get them for $1.99 a 12 pack. 

(Please overlook the dirty clothes hamper also in this photo - I don't have a laundry room, just a laundry closet.  The hamper stays on top of the dryer, unless I'm doing laundry.  That must have been the case when this picture was taken.)

Here is the top portion of the pantry.  Notice the Tupperware with a brown substance in there?  I'd like to claim that's brown rice, but I'd be lying.  Both that container, and the Christmas snowman tub are filled with popcorn Jay received in a tin for Christmas.  The remainder has since been thrown out.

Also, yes those are cases of canned green beans, corn, and sweet peas.  Meijer had them on sale for $0.30 a can or something insane like that and Jay had his mom get us 3 cases of each.  (We don't have a Meijer nearby, but his parents do.)

Here is the bottom portion of the pantry.  Lots of diced tomatoes, tomato paste, and tomato sauce.  We love spaghetti and chili in my house.  Well I love how easy it is to make, and Jay swears my chili is the best non-chili in the world.  (According to him, its not real chili if you can eat it from a plate.  Mine is thick and hearty enough to eat with a fork.)

The most embarrassing thing in that photo?  The bottle of strawberry daiquiri mix.  Jay and I bought it on our honeymoon and I had daiquiris that whole week.  We didn't use it all and brought the rest home.  We've been married 2 years come fall.

This is the freezer in my kitchen.  Its stuffed full of things that have already been opened - bags of fries, hash browns, pizza rolls.  We check here first, before going out to the mud room freezer.

When I took this picture the refrigerator was actually kinda full.  Eggs have been eaten, beer drank, and some wilted lettuce thrown out.  I wanted to get a picture of the after but I couldn't find Jay's camera.

On top of the fridge was my empty bottle of Darma Initiative beer, bread, and some chips.  Those are all long gone by now and Jay has stashed the beer bottle.

I had trouble taking pictures of the big freezer in the mud room, because the door kept shutting on me.  Here's the door though.  Those big jugs and powerade bottles are full of water - I've read that full freezers are more energy efficient.  Also, in case of emergency we'd just have to wait for them to thaw and we'd have a decent water supply.

More crap.  And some not crap - the frozen tilapia is perfect for those nights I really don't feel like cooking.  Just a little lemon pepper and some time baking in the convection oven and I've got a healthy meal.  (Remember all those canned veggies?)

The 2nd draw is full of frozen veggies.  I tend to throw those into one dish meals I make, just to add in some veggie content.  We love stir-fry so I tend to stock up on those veggies when Kroger has them on sale for $1.  Last time I was at Sams I bought that box of Boca burgers and I love them. The taste is good, but I love how simple they are to make.  Just 2 minutes in the microwave and I have dinner!

Some chicken, ground turkey, beef tips, and chicken thighs round out the rest of my freezer.

I also have a cereal/baking products cabinet as well as one full of spices, and a drawer with Kool-aid and chili, spaghetti, and alfredo sauce packets.

This weekend I made a list of all the items I have on hand and put it in an excel spreadsheet.  Turns out I have 170 different items in my kitchen.   I'm not taking about 10 boxes hamburger helper + 3 containers chicken.  I mean 170 different varieties of food in my house. 

I told you it was embarrassing!

So for the month of September I'm vowing not to grocery shop.  I will use my pantry stores to make breakfast, lunch and dinner each evening.  Like many of you suggested, I'll take the planning a week at a time, surveying what I have on hand at the moment.

I'm giving myself $15 a week ($60 for the month) for fresh produce.  I also want to know, given how much we have on hand, how quickly we'd go through it. 

I was reading Shop, Save, Share by Ellie Kay this weekend and she told about an ice storm her family experienced.  Because of her food stockpile, her family didn't go hungry.

While it seems like a lot of food just looking at it, I'd like to know just how long it'd last us if we had to rely on it.  We're not in an area that gets lots of snow, but I am married to a man that works off straight commission.

No sales = no paycheck.

Sure we have our emergency fund in place, but it'd be nice to know that on those months we don't have as much money coming in we can skimp on grocery shopping and not have very much money going out as well.

Now that I've bored you with the details of mine, how's your pantry purge coming?