The Grocery Challenge



A couple of weeks ago, Jan 11th to be exact, I read a great article in the Dallas Morning News about a family who is entering their second year of a serious consumer re-think. They purchase nothing new except for: food, toiletries and home repair items (like air conditioner filters, light bulbs, etc.). Everything else they buy second hand or learn a way to do without. To kick off the start of the new year, they decided to spend only $100 on groceries for the month of January. They felt they could do this because they had quite a bit of stuff stocked up over the holidays. They were going to use what they had on hand and spend their $100 on perishable items they needed along the way.

The Marlowe family decided to take the grocery challenge, too! Since we didn't read about this until the 11th, we started then but still need the challenge to end on Feb 1st because we're having some friends over for a Super Bowl/Birthday Party for Aaron and we'll need some stuff for that. [DISCLAIMER: We spend $40 on organic milk at Costco before we started, so we didn't include that cost in the hundred bucks. We drink a LOT of milk!]

It's been fun trying to think of creative meals to use the things we have on hand. One example is that we had 1 frozen chicken breast and about 12 or so frozen shrimp. Neither would be enough for us to have for a meal (since there are 4 of us who eat solid food now), but I used both of them and put them in a pasta sauce (a version of the Shady Lady recipe from a previous post) and !PRESTO!, we had a meal! Otherwise the single chicken breast and the small amount of shrimp may have shivered in our freezer, unused, until we threw them away.

The challenge is....challenging....but fun and definitely do-able, especially with the money we're saving using coupons, etc. See my receipts to see how we're doing so far.

About Us

www.LaBump.com was created by 3 sisters with the help of our mother, better known as “Amma” to all of our little ones. We believe that every woman should have access to fabulous maternity clothing and beautiful, gently used children’s clothing and gear. We spent years sending the same old box o’ maternity clothes back and forth to each other in an effort to share cute maternity wear among sisters. Finally, we concluded that there must be more women out there like us, looking for maternity clothing and gently used toys and items for their little ones. We started this site as a way to expand our own network and hopefully help other mommies do the same. As every smart mommy knows, one of the ultimate forms of recycling is recirculating gently used items for children and mothers. We have put a new spin on typical hand me down clothing by creating a network of women in your city who can buy sell and trade maternity clothing and accessories and gently used clothing, toys, and gear for our little ones.