February Challenge?

Our freezer is full. Although I'm usually the one who puts things away in there, I'm not really sure what we have underneath the top layer. And every week I get more special deals to try to fit in.

So Doug and I decided that we are going to take a big challenge in February. We will spend the month 'eating down' our inventory of food. My goal is to spend $20 or less each week just buying milk, eggs, and fresh fruit/veggies. We want to see how much money we can save by not shopping, and we'll clean out the freezer and pantry in the process! We want to donate the savings to a food bank...seems like a worthy cause!

I'm preparing ahead for this effort or I know we won't make it. I plan to clean the freezer next week to find out exactly what we have, then I'll put together a month's worth of menus so we can use it effectively. I know there will be some areas where we have trouble (like the boys addiction to poptarts...I'm a failure as a mom!), so we decided that it's ok to stock up on some things AS LONG AS I can do it within the regular January food budget.

We've been talking about this for a while. We've even skipped a week of grocery shopping a few times (sometimes because life just intervened). But we've never really tried to see how frugal we can be!

So, anyone want to join us in this challenge?