Experiment Update #2

Well, 12 days have passed since I challenged myself, and I still have 9 days to go. Here is my tally from the past week. There were three different trips to the store.

Trip to the store 1
apples $2.77
bananas $1.19
onions $0.76 (hated spending my money on these as they were in terrible condition)
bread $2.50
with tax $7.44
Left: $6.30

Trip to the store 2
2 creamed corn 1.34
with tax 1.38
Left: $4.92

Trip to the store 3
broccoli $0.60
green leaf lettuce $1.78
4 tomatoes $.72 (looking back, I should gotten only 2 or 3)
with tax $4.36 (I was only able to get these at this price due to price-matching, which seemed to annoy my cashier.)

Left in the envelope:

$0.56

It's safe to say that my shopping days are nearly over.


I've learned a few things so far in this experiment.

1. While I may not be able to feed my family on $21 a month, I can feed them well on a lot less than I have been IF I apply consistent effort and creativity. (I will post the list of what we ate when our food supply is finished.)

2. I am fine eating almost anything as long as I have fresh fruits and vegetables every day. Seeing my supply of these dwindle makes me feel really uncomfortable.

3. My husband really does not mind if we repeat meals. (Phew!)

4. A good storage of extra food makes eating feel like we're NOT living on food storage.

Will I make it the rest of the month without having to pull money from our 'gasoline' envelope? I think we can last another 5-7 days. I'm hoping for 9 days. The biggest question mark is in the fruit arena. That may be what causes me to end the experiment early. Either I will want a fruit or my toddler will have a breakdown without her daily banana.