Use It or Lose It

Since the disaster that was Stoptober, I've found that when I'm not under any pressure not to spend money, I have been spending significantly less.  There's nothing like imposed frugality to make one want to spend money wrecklessly.  It must be the rebel in me.

Anyway, pressure off, the urge to spend has receded somewhat.  It has helped that I have been busy preparing and selling stock in my small business in the run up to Christmas.  I just haven't had the time to go shopping, unless it has been food shopping or online shopping for business purposes or the odd small Christmas present.

An example of my recent overspending is expenditure on food.  Throughout Stoptober, because I was unable to spend on anything other than food and household essentials, I found myself buying more food than was really necessary, including placing a large order from Approved Foods, convincing myself that it would all get used and I couldn't pass up such good offers.  Much of it, however, was left in the cupboard, whilst I utilized the items I was buying on my weekly food shops.  I decided that this sort of behaviour needs to stop.  So no more non-spending challenges for me, if I can help it, as it just tends to exacerbate my desire to shop and I'm going to seriously curb my food stockpiling tendencies too if I can.

Yesterday, I made a concerted effort to try to start using the items I had stockpiled in the cupboards.  Small individual apple crumbles were made from crumble mix from AF and cooking apples bought and not used over the summer.  Ashamedly, several had started to go off, as I'd left them in a cupboard and forgotten about them.  Such a waste, and I hate waste.  Pannacottas were made with yellow ticketed (but in well in date) double cream from ASDA and a mix bought in bulk from AF.  Plenty of desserts to keep us going for the rest of the week.

For dinner, I made OH and myself a Rustic Beef stew with dumplings utilising a packet mix and dumpling mix from AF.  I used the last few rubbery carrots from the fridge and some home grown runner beans from the freezer.  After being cooked for several hours you can't tell how old they were.  It felt good to start to utilise things that I'd previously left languishing unused.  I'm hoping to carry on in the same vein for the rest of the month and buy as little food as possible every week and instead use up what is overstocked in the cupboards.  A cupboard clear out before Christmas isn't a bad idea anyway.