Eating from the pantry challenge

Money Saving Mom is doing a pantry challenge for the month of January. I am not in on this challenge, but I do feel inspired by it to simply use up some of our stuff. I am hoping to add more money to dour savings by slimming down the food budget. Our food budget is pretty tight..so this is a challenge for us. I only spend between 100-125 a week for a family of 6...with one of those being a 14 year old you can see what I mean by challenge.

Here is a list of some of the things we do to keep our budget low for food. This is not rocket science, but I think some people do not realize how doing some of these simple things can add up to large savings.

1--We drink only 4 things...lots of milk, water, tea, and a minor amount of 100% juice products. Of these 4 things...we drink water mostly and it is from our filtered fridge..not bottled.
We do not drink coffee or soda...those items can really bite your budget!

2. I buy very little if any packaged food products. I do buy boxed pasta and some basic canned goods. But I don't buy things like Hamburger helper, frozen dinner pkgs, cake mixes, or packgaged cookies. Besides the fact that most packaged things are unhealthy...they are also expensive when it comes to trying to feed a family of 6 with them.

3. I do buy off brand items most of the time. There are a few exceptions...I prefer crest toothpaste but will deal with Colgate. I prefer Jif Peanut butter, but usually buy the larger off brands anyway. Other than those...if there is an off brand available for a better price..I get it.

4. I buy off brand large items from Sams.
I recently got some dish dtg....here it is pictured. This will hopefully last us 6 months or more. To inspire me to make it last longer...I write the dates on the pkg. I also buy laundry dtg. off brand from Sams. Our last purchase of laundry dtg was in October....my bucket still has likely two more weeks of dtg in it and the large container cost under $10.00.

Well, those are some of the things I do to save a buck on groceries...perhaps I will post more later :) So what are some of the things you do?