January's No Food Shopping Challenge 2025

Dizzycap · 24 January at 3:18AM

@ EitherWalnut sending you HUGE hugs, love, and prayers at this heartbreaking time. There are no words that can ever come close to describing the loss of a faithful love

Take care & be kind to yourself xxxx

EitherWalnut · 27 January at 8:59AM

Good Morning Everyone. Thank you all for your kind thoughts. I know it was the kinder thing to do in the end, but it's just a horrible thing to have to choose.

I hope everyone is alright after the storm. I'm in NI, and we got it particularly bad. Lost power quite early on, and my outbuilding was absolutely destroyed. Tumble dryer wrecked, chest freezer badly dented but otherwise seems okay thankfully. Power back on for me now, but I have friends who have been told to expect to be without electricity for another week! So any money saved in January will now be redirected to the repair fund!

We're on the home stretch for the challenge now, with less than a week to go! Spent £14.35 on a few bits on Saturday as I had predicted I would, but going to really make the effort now for the rest of this week to try and keep my total spend under £20.

Thriftymissus · 27 January at 10:51AM

That sounds awful @EitherWalnut, I hope you can find time to be kind to you. Sounds like you’ve done amazing on your challenge despite some dreadful circumstances.

also, thank you for running this challenge and inspiring me, I’ve spent £13 this month on groceries so that’s really quite something x

abundant1972 · 30 January at 11:49AM

Good afternoon!

Sorry I have been AWOL for so long. I fell into full on hibernation mode, and had the flu/bad cough.

Hugs EitherWalnut - so sorry for your loss. You sound like you were hit badly by the storm - where is NI?

I'm afraid I totally lost track of the no food shopping days - however... I did complete the challenge bar one bag of pasta! I used up all my frozen fish and was able to defrost the freezer! Hoorah. Have resisted going out doing a huge shop and re-filling everything - I'm going to just try and buy what I need for each week now. Feb I will try and design a healthy meal plan.

No Food Shopping Days = Erm... 🤔
Spend Days = Erm... 🤔

Thanks for running this challenge. It really helped me appreciate food - and saved me a heap of money too! x

EitherWalnut · 30 January at 9:06PM

Hey Everyone!

Really well done on getting this far. Just one day left! I'm delighted some of you have found it worthwhile. It's such a good feeling to be able to get the freezer defrosted, isn't it? I'm hoping to be better at meal planning in February - hopefully just buying what I need to build meals around the stuff I have left.

@abundant1972 NI is Northern Ireland - we had gusts over 100mph - absolutely bonkers!

I used the Olio app for a couple of hot meals this week - a pork casserole, and some BBQ turkey. Then this evening, I made an IKEA inspired dinner using frozen meatballs and mash, and served it with lingonberry jam, some sad bottom-of-the-fridge broccoli and the last of the whiskey cream gravy from the weekend.

abundant1972 · 31 January at 3:12PM

Ahhhh! I was trawling through all the US states 😅 EitherWalnut haha. They are some crazy wind speeds 🌪

Thank you for running the challenge. Very much appreciated! x

AnotherNewDay · 1 February at 3:54PM

Hi - thanks @EitherWalnut for setting up this thread and for everyone who took part for the support and inspiration! It has been a revelation for me!
28 Jan was when my budget reset for the month and I ended up buying eggs, soya milk and marg totalling £5.40 for the whole of Jan. I would never have managed that w/out this group.