Empty The Freezer Challenge {Day 2}

Day 2 of The Empty The Freezer Challenge, I think I started to realize where I was going to run into trouble:

Time
Planning
Preparation

But first, if this is the first time you’re seeing this challenge – what is it?

The “Empty The Freezer Challenge”

What is it? The Empty The Freezer Challenge is my way of encouraging you to not only slow down this season, but save money and get creative! I would guess that most of you are like us: you have tons of food in your freezer which may or may not be edible, that you’ve either forgotten or aren’t super motivated to eat.

They may require some creative meal preparation or presentation, but they’re still good to eat!

Starting December 1st, I’ll by on a mission to use up everything in my freezer – that is still safe to eat. I don’t want to buy anything from the grocery store except for milk. We get eggs from friends who have chickens, so don’t think we’re avoiding using eggs – we’re not.

We may or may not get through all of the food in our THREE freezers, but we’re going to try! Then, on December 25th when we have family over I’ll finally be able to cook with new food from the grocery store!

What Will The Challenge Accomplish?

The Empty The Freezer Challenge have several purposes:

It will encourage you to spend very little/no money on groceries during most of the month of December – a no-spend month of sorts, but without calling it that.
It will get tons of food our of your freezer!
And it will give you a blank slate for the new year – at least as far as your fridge/freezer are concerned
As a bonus, your family will probably complain a lot less in 2016 when you make a creative or inexpensive meal!

It can be challenging to not eat out during a month, and to consistently plan for and prepare meals when your time is limited, which is why we messed up on Day 2.

We ate out.

We weren’t planning to at all, actually. The hubs got home about 4 from work, and I had the stuff out to make sandwiches so we could get on the road fairly quickly, but none of us were hungry. So we packed up to take me a meeting, and for the hubs and baby girl to go meet Grandma in Edwardsville.

When we finally left Edwardsville at 7:30 pm we had a crabby kiddo and were starving. Normally, I carry protein powder packets in my purse for times like this, but today, I forgot my purse.

One Gouda Bacon burger (no bun) and I was good to go…….

All of this made me think about what I could do help time, planning and preparation constraints that tend to pop up:

Time –

Obviously, time is a constraint for everyone, but I’ve found that my mornings tend to be much more laid back than afternoons, so in order to make this happen, I need to take advantage of my mornings to come up with a plan for the day.

Plan –

Using my mornings to come up with an empty the freezer meal plan for the day will no only make the day go smoother, it will allow me to think through the day and put it on “autopilot” so I don’t have to think about meals the rest of the day.

Preparation –

Once I’ve used my laid-back time to create a plan, then I can lay out food for the meals I’ve planned to defrost, bring the oldest leftovers to the front of the fridge, or throw dinner into the crockpot.

Since Day 2 is over, Day 3 will be the first day I’m implementing the plan to use my mornings to set myself up for success, and I can already see my mornings getting busy and not making cooking from the freezer a priority, so I’ll have to make sure to stay on my game! But even with our dinner failure, we did manage to get some more food out of our fridge before it spoiled:

Breakfast: Waffle Sticks & syrup for the little one (imaginative, I know) and a “bulletproof” protein shake for me

Lunch: Leftover pizza for me, the little one, and the hubs

Dinner: Ate out

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s update!

Want To Keep Up With The Challenge via Email? Simply Subscribe Below: