As I detailed in my last post, Just Pantry January is an idea we had to curb our spending and go through our, well, pantry, fridge, and freezer to eat and drink the items we already have. Now that January is over, I’m back to share some of the results!

I suppose said results might seem sort of obvious, but here I go anyway. We definitely held onto more money in our budget by the end of the month. In a way, we also extended the concept of Just Pantry January to other non-food-related expenses that we found had gotten out of control in the past year. There were certain events and experiences that we won’t be doing again, there was more travel in 2024 than we anticipate doing in 2025, and there are other ways of spending money that we’re cutting back on. There are even things that we discovered could be spread out more and not bought all at once. We decided that we’ll be prioritizing some of those purchases a bit differently going forward.

Yet even in our grocery and dining expenses, a category of spending that we thought was kind of untouchable because we need to put food on the table, we’ve been able to cut back just by tackling the perishable and non-perishable items we already have. As I mentioned in my previous post, we are by no means buying in bulk all the time, as a family of four; we’ve taken advantage of things like lot sales, and we buy stuff like toilet paper, paper towels, and other paper products in bunches. However, turns out that when you do just a couple of lot sales for soup, and you don’t eat soup all of the time, it adds up and takes up space! We all like soup, of course, except the plan from now on is to maybe not buy so much of it at the same time, no matter how good the sale is.

The choices of cuisine have thankfully not been as bland as I thought they might be going into something like Just Pantry January. Using up the frozen and canned vegetables, in particular, over buying new, fresh produce has been pretty big. We’ve still bought fresh vegetables depending on the recipes we’ve done (and gotten salad makings in the house again). There are entire websites literally built for coming up with recipes using foods that you already have in your home! It’s been a huge relief to not totally sacrifice a well-balanced diet while saving money, too. We thought that would be a lot harder.

One month already seems to have made a difference, as reflected in our accounts. I felt really good about the amount I could put towards each credit card payment this month! I don’t think we’re talking about a… Just Pantry 2025?… or anything drastic like that. But one month alone has been a great exercise, and more importantly a very doable one, to rein things in a little and get back on track financially!

Finally: a new year’s resolution I can actually get behind!