I thought I would start off the month updating you on the frugal food challenge we set ourselves in June, I would love to tell a lie and say we smashed it but I wouldn’t do that to you, my lovely readers.

Trying to live a more frugal lifestyle is a learning process, like anything else in life you can’t be 100% perfect all of the time and although we didn’t perfect this challenge we still made some big improvements and I’m more than happy with that.

Cut The Crap

This was and wasn’t a total failure, we still had a few takeaways and had a few too many treats of an evening but we did it all within our budget and only if we were sure we could afford it, of course, it would have been much better to have plowed the money we spent in a better direction and we will keep striving to do better in this area.

On the plus side, I lost 6lbs in June by being more physically active, the decluttering, deep cleaning and gardening have really paid off.

Waste Nothing

I did really well in this area, I only got food out of the freezer if I was sure we were going to eat it, I’ve made a meal plan every week, and other than the odd takeaway we have stuck to it this means I’ve only bought what we actually needed for those meals and nothing extra.

Chris and I are not big fruit eaters but I feel it’s really important for the kids to eat fruit, one way I’ve found to really reduce waste in this area is to buy loose and only one or two of each fruit, this is a great way of offering a variety without too much waste.

Repeat, Repeat, Repeat

This challenge has also been a success, Chris and I sat down and wrote a list of meals that we all enjoy, we came up with 14 which we will rotate, this really takes the pressure off not knowing what to make each night and again reduces waste, simplicity really is best when it comes to meal planning.