Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Cub Food. Opinions are 100% my own.
We’ve all been there! Our pantries and cupboards are bursting at the hinges and can barely contain all of the food that we have purchased over the months. But, yet we still buy more every week. Every time we get groceries we pick up that can of tomato soup or box of mac and cheese. In reality if we took the time to look in our cabinets, we probably have 15 boxes of mac and cheese and 12 cans of soup.
Why?
Why don’t we use what we have on hand and create some delicious meals using all those expensive groceries that we have? All it takes is a little bit of creativity and thought!
When my pal, Ashley, over at Crunchy Frugalista decided to put out a pantry challenge this week, I jumped on board to participate! This was the perfect opportunity for me to clear out some food and save some money!
What is a Pantry Challenge?
A Pantry challenge is when you use all the food and goodies in your pantry to create meals for your family over the weeks or months to help cut back on your grocery spending and clean out the cupboards at the same time.
For my family of four, I spend around $100 a week. Yes, that’s crazy to me! In my defense, my hobby is baking and cooking so I do get supplies for that in that $100.
How do I plan to cup back on my spending?
Step 1 – Use what I have in the cupboards. That doesn’t mean that we are having spaghetti every night or even tomato soup every other night. That means that I am going to be surfing Pinterest and finding new recipes to use the ingredients that I have on hand!
Step 2 – Make my $50 grocery budget go as far as I can. I will be planning my shopping trip to Cub Food to get the most for my money that I can. If I am trying to budget, plan and get great deals, I always shop at Cub Food. By using their in store coupons and the Ad coupons, I can pick up my fruits & vegetables,milk, bread and lots of other items for less than $50! I love my Cub Food and all the deals I can get!
You might like to know that Cub Food is running an amazing Giveaway this month!
Cub Food is giving you a chance to win a $4,500 Cub Gift Card!
PRIZES: One grand prize of $4,500 in the form of 100-45 Cub® gift cards will be awarded to the winner. Four $45 Cub® gift cards will be awarded at random to fans who share photos or videos.
All you have to do is share a photo or video to get in the running for this amazing prize! This would really help my grocery spending for the year!
Seriously! How great would this be?! Check out the rules and follow along with Cub Food on their Facebook page.
Be sure to check back later in the week to see how my Pantry Challenge is going and the recipes that I have made using my pantry food and $50 that I spend at Cub Food!
Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Cub Food. Opinions are 100% my own.
We are on a pantry challenge just about every month. I have tried to do well using the items in the freezer, fridge and pantry to make sure that we are using all of the items that we buy. It is a great way to use the next month to stock up on items that we might need for the following month with a little bit for milk and veggies that we need this month. I use a monthly budget of $160 each month and do a good job of staying under that almost every month. It does bring out creativity but a lot of times, I get lazy. I am going to do better for my Menu Plan for October to be creative 🙂
Definitely need to do this with my pantry. Its so full we cant fit anything new in it. Im afraid of what we will find when we start cleaning it out. Thanks for sharing! Stop by my Fridays Five Features and link up this post (and others)!
Good luck on your pantry challenge! We have to do one here about once a year to clean out the freezers and pantry. Thanks for linking up at Pin It Tuesday!
This is a great idea. Great easy way not only to save money but go through the food you already have.
I would love to save money on groceries but right now my pantry is looking rather pitiful. I will be following this challenge though! I think I could learn some great things!
This a great idea!! However, if I decide to participate I have to organize my panther first. The other day I found something that expired in 2004 LOL. Thanks for sharing.
I need to organize my pantry, this is a great challenge for me.
We sort of do that. We will head to WinCo & do a stock up trip of around $400-$600 picking up enough meat & main dish items to fill the freezer. Then we also buy as many things in bulk- canned goods, the big 25-30 lb bags of beans, rice, flour & sugar. Then once everything is packed full we then spend around $60-100 every 7-10 days on things like milk, fresh produce since we like to have lots of those things on hand. It really does help to not be in the store as often & not have to do huge trips but once every few months.
I love this idea! We’ve tried this a few times without success but I need to really get into this. We are moving soon and I’d love to get through most of what we have instead of just buying buying buying before we even eat what we have! Sometimes I think, “If I threw all of the food in my pantry onto the conveyor belt, it would probably add up to about $400, so WHY am I still buying food every week?!?!” 🙂 Thanks for the reminder!
This sounds like a great challenge!
Again, I wish my pantry was stocked enough to participate at this point! But I did pin this and share it on FB, for my friends who didn’t just move!
Glad to have you join us! That Cub Giveaway is awesome. I just shopped there yesterday and got SO much stuff from them!