No Grocery Store?

Recently, I've been reading more and more articles about people who have decided to avoid the grocery stores.  At first I was skeptical.  But now, I'm intrigued by the idea.

What would it really take to avoid buying groceries at the grocery store for a year? 

First, you need to answer some questions.

What is considered a grocery store?

Where you're going to get the essentials that you need (like toilet paper ;) )?   

How much stuff can you order from places like Amazon and Azure Standard?

Are you going to not eat anything you can't grow or produce yourself?

Will you only buy from local sources, ie farmers markets, co-ops...?

What staples (beans, rice, sugar...) are you going to decided are on the ok to buy list?

What about pet and animal feed?

And once the questions have been answered, you to need to set the ground rules.

And what about rewards?  Are you going to have a monthly reward dinner out to celebrate making it through another month?

I think we're going to go for it.  It'll take us time to figure out the answers to these (and more) questions and to establish the ground rules.  It'll take time for us to plan our gardens and calculate how much and what we need to plant.

But in the long run, I think it will be worth it.  Imagine the freedom from running to the grocery store every time you decide you have nothing to eat (even though your pantry is well stocked).  Or the money that could be saved because you're not tempted to throw extra things in your cart (and in my case, the gas to drive into town ;) ).

Not sure on a start date (although January 1st sounds good).  As we work through the questions and develop our ground rules, I'll keep you posted =)