Dang....feeding a family of 4 on $250 a month!!?? Granted this doesn't include household/toiletry items which my budget does, but honestly 4 people....we only have 2 well 2 1/2....Abbie doesn't eat a ton but she does eat. As I looked at her list and realized we don't eat a ton of organic food in this house, nor do we really care to, but we do eat mostly unprocessed stuff (oats, brown rice, black beans, etc), it dawned on me that she did this while buying really expensive things like organic whole milk....$8.50 a gallon? Are you serious? Soo.....since I am really competitive and I don't like to lose (aka sore loser :) I think I might start to work on challenging myself to do this. It seems doable. Scary but doable. Especially since we don't buy expensive organics. We currently allow ourselves $150 every 2 weeks.....even that has been tight lately with the rising costs of groceries. But seriously....she did it for 4 people. I am getting better about being less wasteful but I could do a better job than I do. Also I think doing this will help hold me accountable to the amount of waste I have and also the amount of non necessities I actually end up purchasing!
There is a lot of media attention/marketing investment out there in the whole "organic" thing. I'm not saying some of it isn't legitimate. Since my husband is currently about to graduate with his degree in Food Science he has actually spent a fair amount of time studying some of these concepts. The actual regulations and rules applied to being able to claim something is organic vs hormone free, etc is really interesting, and marketing does play a huge part. From what I understand only a certain % of a product has to be organic to meet the requirement to label something "organic." This is why we choose not to purchase a lot of organic stuff. I'm not saying we don't ever. I do know there are a lot of different resources out there on foods that should be purchased organic etc. I am definitely interested in learning more about them and if you have any resources from reputable sources (like academic journals etc) please send them my way. I'd love to consider implementing some new staples into our household if they are indeed healthier and truly of higher nutritional value.
Anyway back to my challenge....I know I can be less wasteful and stretch things more. So I am going to see what I can do. I don't know that I can improve it much knowing that my budget includes toiletries and hers did not but I can sure as heck try! Let me know if you'd like to join my challenge. I'd love to see what everyone else does with their decreased budget!
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