Pantry Challenge 101: What Is It, How To Do It, & Who Shouldn't Participate

 January is a very popular month for pantry challenges although it's something you can do at any time.  What is it and how can you participate?  Let's start at the beginning.

miscellaneous jars of food on a pantry shelf

What Is A Pantry Challenge?
It's a time period, typically 2-4 weeks, where you challenge yourself to eat down the food you have in your home - pantry, refrigerator, and freezer and try to avoid grocery shopping.  Although you'll be eating from all of your food stores, focus on eating down those items that are the oldest and/or perishable with the dual goals of preventing food waste and saving money.

home canned jams lined up on a piece of wood


Why Stock A Pantry?
The simple answer is, to save you money.  Here is the longer answer.

Purchasing pantry items in bulk when they are on sale and/or preserving pantry staples from produce either you've grown or you've purchased, provides your family an abundance of nutritional food on your shelves that they enjoy.  This changes your grocery shopping from weekly trips of purchasing everything for that week's menu to instead, purchasing fresh fruit/veg/dairy as needed and restocking your pantry when there are sale items you are in need of.  Shopping in this manner offers a great way to help reduce your grocery bill.

Preparing a well-stocked pantry can be done slowly.  Focusing on items purchased at the lowest prices (grocery sales are cyclical) or, of course, preserved in-season helps to make it affordable.  When I first started building my pantry, I would reserve $10-15 of my weekly budget to purchase sale items - pantry staples or extra produce for preserving.  If nothing was on sale that week that I needed, I simply added that money to the next week's stock-up fund.

We've been able to utilize our pantry and freezer stock on a weekly basis, since I build my meal plan primarily around what I've got on hand (what I don't have on hand goes on my grocery list).  We've also leaned on it during tight financial times, allowing us peace of mind and a little breathing room.  

In addition to being a great way to save money, this is where your stocked pantry can shine.  You also may experience a time of financial strain, and eating primarily from your pantry helps prevent your family from experiencing food insecurity as well as reduces the strain on the pocketbook.  Or you may be ill for a week or more and having staples on hand that provide you and your family good nutritional meals means not having to go to the grocery store until you're feeling better.  Or you may prefer to eat as much homegrown and home preserved as you can, particularly with all of the food recalls that happen nowadays.

All of these scenarios are real life possibilities where at least a week or two's worth of excess food in the pantry and/or freezer will help out tremendously.  It's up to you to determine how much makes sense for you to have on hand at any given time.  Space can be an issue, although you can get very creative in figuring out ways to store it.  

The keys are to focus on only stocking items your family eats, adding to your stock during either food sales or when the produce is available in your garden, and to rotate it regularly.

fresh vegetables on a countertop


What Are The Rules Of A Pantry Challenge?
Eating all meals and snacks from your pantry, refrigerator, and freezer and either avoiding the grocery store (and eating out) completely during this time or greatly reducing your food purchases.  Some people choose to spend money on groceries during the challenge while others do not, you decide what works for you.  

As an example, you may decide to only purchase fresh vegetables, fruit, and dairy.  Others allow themselves a dollar amount per week, usually a miniscule amount compared to what they would typically spend, with the goal of spending as little of it as possible.  While others set a hard and fast rule of spending no money at all.

I think that the rules you set for yourself depends on a few factors:  how much you have on hand, especially fruit and veggies, what your goal for the challenge is, and how easy it will be for you to provide food that your family will eat based on what you have on hand.


What Are The Pantry Challenge Goals?
These are the 3 that are most typical:

1. To Save Money - probably the most common goal, many participate during a time that they could use extra money or anticipate times being tight.  

2.  To Avoid Food Waste/Use Up Older Food Stockpiles - it's important if you stock-up on food to rotate it regularly, and a challenge such as this is a great opportunity to ensure this happens.

3. To See How Long You Can Get By With What You Normally Stockpile - most of us bulk buy pretty much the same things all of the time.  Could you eat solely from what you keep on hand for a week or two if you had to?  This type of a challenge is the perfect way to find out where your gaps are as well as to show you what you stock-up too much of.  Also, if you grow/raise/preserve much of your own food, this will help you identify any gaps or excesses.

farm fresh eggs on a towel after having been washed


Why Do Some People Bulk Buy Before A Pantry Challenge?
This is an interesting question that, I'll be honest, when I first saw videos of challenge participants doing this, I asked myself the same question.  I can't answer based on experience, because I've never done this prior to eating down my pantry.  That being said, here's what I can gather:

We all make our own rules for the challenge and some people choose to ensure their family does not go without favorites during this period while others need to "fill in the gaps" to ensure they have what's necessary for complete meals.

While you may not see a huge savings by doing it this way, you can save some money simply from no add-ons when shopping weekly and it can still help identify where your stock-up gaps are.

If you do choose to bulk buy prior to the challenge, keep focused on what the challenge is, which is eating primarily from what you currently have on hand.


Can You Save Money On A Pantry Challenge?
Yes!  How much you can save depends on the rules you give yourself and the timeframe of your challenge, but you can absolutely save money.  If you can avoid shopping for any food products (or greatly reducing what you spend) during your challenge period, all of the money you would have spent during that time is now money saved.   This takes creativity, pre-planning, and being careful to not completely deplete your food reserves.

Creativity because you may have to find alternatives to what you would normally use in a recipe.  For instance, you may have to use that half a box of crackers for breadcrumbs when you run out of bread, or egg replacers (applesauce or flax seeds, for instance) in a baked good if you're limited on eggs.  Planning ahead what you'll prepare for meals and snacks will give you time to think about alternative options.

Pre-planning will also help you ensure you don't use up all of your stocked food that could provide healthy meals for your family should an emergency happen.  Keeping at least one week's worth of food in your reserves is a great way to ensure you are prepared if needed.  It also means you have enough items to make meals from that you don't have to immediately begin purchasing all of the staples you've used up.


When Is The Best Time To Do A Pantry Challenge?
You can elect to join a public pantry challenge or conduct a challenge of your own at any time.  Whether it's to eat down your pantry, to save money for a specific monetary goal, or because your income has been cut, whenever you choose to do one is a great time to do so.

You can choose to do a pantry challenge when you are getting ready for food preservation season.  This will help you eat down what is left from the previous year and make room for the new.

You can also choose to do a pantry challenge when your pantry is quite full of food stocked up when you found it on sale.  After you eat down your pantry you wait for each of the items to go on sale again before you add them back to your stock.

There are many reasons why you may decide to do this.  If it's your first time doing so and it's a voluntary challenge (i.e. not required because of financial issues), I highly recommend starting with a 1-week challenge.  This provides you the opportunity to try it out without it being too overwhelming.


pantry shelves full of jars of food


How Do I Implement A Pantry Challenge?
1. Determine your reason for the pantry challenge.  Do you want to save money?  How much money?  Do you want to reduce food waste?  Figure out where your stock-up gaps are?  Figure out your reason and use that to become your mantra for pushing you through the toughest days of the challenge.

2. Pick a start and end date.  If it's your first time, maybe try 1 week.  If you don't want to set an end date, then set an end time based on how much you want to eat down, i.e. when the freezer is 1/2 gone, when the pantry is half gone, etc.

3.  Inventory your pantry, refrigerator, and freezer.  This will help you figure out your timeframe and your self-imposed rules.  It will also give you a starting point of items you need to use up first.

4.  Set your rules and stick to them.  Will you allow yourself to spend any money on groceries to stock-up before the challenge?  How about during the challenge?  If so, how much and on what?  If you do decide to grocery shop during the challenge, try to limit yourself to only once a week or less.

5. Think about the what if's ahead of time.  If you're used to making pretty much everything from scratch, this may not be as much of a stretch.  However, if you're not, there may be trying times during the challenge.  What if you forget to take something out for dinner?  What if you don't have all of the ingredients to make what you normally make?  What will you do on busy nights where your time is limited?  Take a look at your family calendar to try and pre-plan what you can.

  **I've written about this before and it's not sponsored, but a website such as Super Cook can be very handy.  It allows you to enter in which ingredients you have on hand and then generates a list of recipes (using only those ingredients).*



Who Shouldn't Participate In A Pantry Challenge?
If you are someone who does not stock up for more than a week or two, it wouldn't make sense for you to participate in this type of challenge.  Instead, what you could challenge yourself to do is to set a lower dollar amount for your weekly or bi-weekly grocery shopping trip and eat from that without stopping for extras throughout the week.



If you've never tried to challenge yourself with a pantry challenge, I encourage you to give it a try.  You will learn a lot about how you stock up and you will likely save a chunk of money in the process!  And if you don't currently meal plan from your food stores first (pantry/refrigerator/freezer), I highly encourage you to start today.  It will help reduce food waste, give a boost to your grocery budget, and change the way you plan your food storage.

pin it for later:
pantry shelves lined with jars of food


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