I'm giving up grocery shopping for lent...

OK, not really - It would be even sillier than giving up FaceBook.

But I realized a few weeks ago while putting away my groceries from Trader Joe's that I had bought duplicates of things I already had. I'm running out of room in my pantry to store food. My freezer has enough frozen Chinese-food-in-a-bag that I could eat it every night for two weeks and still have some left. I even still have leftovers from Thanksgiving that my mom gave me still in the freezer.

The problem is that I don't shop very carefullly. I don't prepare a list, and when I shop at Trader Joe's I just tend to grab the same things every time, without knowing if I actually need them. When I go to the real grocery store, ie Giant, I'm more careful - I peruse the circular and cut out coupons to match stuff that on sale, and so I don't have the same problem - except that I sometimes buy things because they are on sale even though I don't need/use them.

It's occurred to me that I've got a bunch of money tied up in inventory. So I've told myself that I'm not going to buy groceries until I finish what I have in the house.

That isn't, of course, totally true. I'm still going to buy certain perishables (soy milk, bread). I also take frozen stuff for lunch (rice bowls, hot pockets, lean cuisine) and I'll keep buying them as needed (although I'm tempted to just start taking cereal for lunch, since I at present have something like 9 boxes of cereal... I got a good deal). So what it really means is that I won't be buying stuff for dinner or weekend lunches.

I haven't made a "big" shopping trip in about two weeks, and I can probably go a couple more before I need to....