The 30 day eat at home challenge - Are you up for it?
Welcome back!
While eating out frugally can be done, (see this post for instructions), it is still almost always more cost-effective to prepare meals at home. For various reasons, I am guilty of doing the opposite. Maybe it’s the lack of time, the convenience factor, or just plain laziness, but I find myself eating out more than I’d care to admit, and it needs to change.
Besides the financial aspect, it’s more healthful to eat at home because this way I know exactly what does, and equally important, what doesn’t go into my foods. So I am going to be planning menus, and keeping lots of healthy fruits and vegetables on hand for snacking, so that I’m not tempted to stray.
The plan is to go grocery shopping once a week, and stick to a predetermined list that I’ll make based on the menu plan. If I can stick to this for a month, it should become a habit and more second-nature for me, improving both my finances and waistline.
So I will be eating all my meals at home for the next thirty days, and I challenge you all to do the same!
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We rarely eat out, and one thing that helps us out in this department is to fix a fancy meal once every week or two. We’ll splurge a little on a recipe we haven’t tried to see if we like it (usually buying some spices or other ingredients we haven’t tried).
One advantage to this is that if we like the recipe, we usually have the ingredients on hand to fix it again at less expense to us.
Please share your shopping list…..I am definitely in!
@moneyloveandchange - Nice idea. I hope you have good luck with those new recipes.
@Laura - Maybe I will throw my shopping list up. Best of luck to you on the 30 day challenge.
I really like this idea… my wife and I try to eat at home regularly (and we fail at it regularly, too!).
We almost always have a new recipe every week, but we also keep any “experimental” recipes that we like, and have created our own “Hartley Household Cookbook (HHC)” in a recycled 3-ring binder!
So we generally have one dinner that is new, a couple that are from the “tried and true” HHC, and maybe a microwaveable quick meal (we try to stay healthy with those as well).
Good luck, and if my life ever slows down a little and I’m home more, I’ll take the challenge myself!
Namaste,
A. Caleb Hartley
If it’s not too much to ask, it would be nice if you can follow up this post with the list of grocery items you bought plus your meal plans for the week.
I would like to follow your lead and experiment on it
I eat out maybe once a month, more if I am with relatives.. which isn’t often. So I do a good job at eating at home, just maybe not healthfully. Healthy food is pretty expensive compared to junk food.
i wish i could do this, but i will be out of state for 1 week on business, making this challenge impossible lol
Good luck on your challenge. I love to eat out also (nothing like some good Chinese food or pizza) but I noticed once I started meal planning and eating in more I have saved money and lost some weight too
@A. Caleb Hartley - I love the family recipe book idea. Especially because you are using a *recycled* three-ring binder. Good for you!
@Marc - I’m hoping to get some time to organize that info and post about it. Things are really busy here, but I’ll try to get time for such an update.
@Gary R. Hess - Yup. Junk food can be quite a bit cheaper, but your health is priceless.
@tiffanie - Travel safe!
@Erica @ A Woman in Business - I generally notice the same things. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to make good chinese food at home. Maybe I’ll give it another try though.
Eating at home all the time became very easy for us when we moved to a place where the nearest grocery store, restaurant, or fast food was 30 miles away, and we’ve never regretted it for an instant. We eat better and spend less money on food than ever before, and I actually dread the occasions that we have to eat out, such as when traveling, because no place cooks as good as I do!
The bonus to doing this is that your taste buds will change and you can actually lose your taste for fast food. I can’t stand the stuff anymore.
@Jannifer Robin - Yeah, I guess that would pretty much force one to eat at home.
I have a secret dream of living far out in the country, where I can have a little farm and grow my own food. However, we live in a city and are surrounded by restaurants!
Now, this is a great plan. Without a doubt, you have so much more control over what you put in your body and the caloric and fat intake than you do eating food prepared elsewhere. It just makes you so much more accountable!
As a person that lives in a totally urban area completely surrounded by convenience I can 100% understand the level of challenge this must be for you. I am curious to see how it works out for you and what poses the biggest challenges for you.
Best of luck on your adventure in eating…
@The Fitness Diva - I’m also noticing increased energy, and just feeling all around healthier.
@Tina Smith - Thanks for the understanding and support, Tina.
I have decided to take you up on your challenge; however, I have hit a dilemma. What about when it is a work related meal that you don’t have to pay for?
@Beau71 - That’s a tricky one. While health and knowing what goes into our food are main themes of this challenge, frugality is its core. I say, go for it, and enjoy your free lunch.