One Month Without - 3 Weeks In

Okay, so we're officially three weeks into our month of no purchases.  Since a month has slightly more than four weeks, we actually have 10 days left.  We're done on November 9th.  I'm trying hard to think of what to update on since week three was pretty similar to week two.  We did, however, make a tiny splurge when Nick was given a small cash tip at a wedding.  We decided we would use that to pick up a small bag of chips, some drinks, and some popsicles.  The amount of time that went into deciding what exactly we would spend that $20 on was humorous.  Other than that, we've been really good and haven't purchased anything other that business expenses.

I think what stands out the most to us is that we still think, "Oh let's go pick up...", almost daily when we go past a store.  It's interesting that the mere sight of a store almost instantly triggers us to shift into a consumerism mind-set.  We don't even NEED what we're thinking of picking up!  It's just stuff that would be nice.  I'm wondering how long we would have to go before we stopped doing that.  We've  also settled into a bit of a meal routine.  A big pot of beans, red sauce, and ground beef with random stuff thrown in is made once a week.  This usually serves us for multiple dinners and multiple lunches as I make a REALLY big batch at a time.  I wasn't a fan of week two's stew, but am loving week three's chili!

Another thing that stands out to me, personally, as the meal instigator is HOW MUCH FOOD we have in our house.  Seriously, we still have enough meat in the freezer to last months.  Literally.  We haven't even come close to using up our fresh produce.  Since we bought oranges and really hard apples, and have been keeping them in the fridge, they're doing just fine.  I'm also surprised at just WHAT I'm finding in the corners of our cupboards.  I meant to take the container of cookie dough out of the freezer to defrost and, instead, I realized the next day that I had taken out an identical container of sliced roast beef.  I didn't even know we had sliced roast beef in the freezer.  Next, I was lining up all our jams and preserves on a shelf to show Nick the ridiculous amount that we have, and suddenly discovered that one of them was pesto.  We LOVE pesto!  If we knew that was in there, it wouldn't have lasted this long.  I can't believe we live in society, in a community, in a house that has so much food that we forget even about really good stuff we have.  I kid you not - we could go another month easily without hurting.  We don't stock pile.  Heck, we don't usually even cook!  This is just the stuff that has accumulated over the weeks, months, and years.  I can tell you one thing - when our month is up, I have a very small grocery list of things we're missing (coffee, peanut butter, etc.).  However, I'm not going to run and stock up on everything.  My eyes have been opened to a lot of meal possibilities that I'm going to work on eating through first before I pick up too much else.