Advent Grocery Challenge
This year one of the ways that I am preparing to welcome the Christ Child at Christmas is by becoming more conscious of my consumption in the form of groceries.
The challenge is to:
- Set a food budget
- Seek to under-spend the budget as much as possible
- To share in the experience of those whose limited resources require them to always be mindful of the cost of their food
- To give the excess from this area of my life to someone who actually needs it
- Pray each day for the one to whom I have decided to give that which is left unspent at the end of Advent
My plan is to post the amount of every grocery item I buy along with a picture. I can go grocery shopping as often as is convenient during the week, but at the least, each Sunday I will post about every item purchased.
I decided to blog about this because I find it easier to stay on track when I am recording things precisely, and I hope that I can benefit from anyone who happens to read and comment.
This is certainly an attempt at improvement, not a pretense of perfection. So if you see something especially atrocious that I have bought I would love it if you commented with an explanation for why you would not make that same choice. And if you are doing something similar please leave a link so that anyone interested can read about your experience as well!

- In Case You Were Wondering…
- Advent? What Advent
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Loooooooove this. Can’t wait to see what you do. I just took pictures of my food purchases for today so I can join in the game
I don’t know why I SO deeply love seeing what foods people buy/make, but I do.
And I love the idea of trying to underspend in order to give the excess where it’s needed.
This sounds like a great idea! I definitely don’t use much discipline in the grocery store, and I should. Looking forward to seeing how it goes.
You are an inspiration Rae my friend! I will answer your challenge by telling you of my hubby and my challenge: We are embarking on an Advent prayerful marriage! Spending each day being mindful of each other, those we love and those God calls into our life – no matter how brief or how long. We will each individually be prayerfully looking at how we have not loved and how we have loved – from the spiritual exercises of Saint Iggy – and as a couple, we will be working to strengthen our marital gifts!
I am blogging this adventure as we go, will let you know how it turns out!
I like this idea too. Good luck with it!
We definitely struggle with our food budget. We had $14/per person/per week in JVC and now we spend…3x times that probably. You’d think I would know how to shop cheaply but I just suck at it.
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I know you were busy, but I would still love to see this sometime even though Advent has long passed. Maybe for Lent! And maybe I could get some healthy tips. Our food budget has skyrocketed.