We shop at the supermarket once per month, meat shop once every 3 months and vege/milk/bread shop weekly. I spend no more than $250 for the month for 2 people on general groceries – which ends up meaning $29 per person per week for food. This also includes lunches for work. I buy meat in bulk, package into meal size portions and freeze. I do not buy pasta sauces or satays etc – I make them from scratch, much cheaper and healthier for you (I do not have ingredients whos names are numbers). Initially I thought it was much more expensive to home make, but that is really only for the initial outlay for specialised products. Buying ingredients in bulk is the way to go but only if you have the capacity to store what is left over – using fresh herbs grown in your garden makes for very tasty seasoning – easy to grow herbs are mint, parsley, basil, chives, coriander and thyme. I attempt to only buy products whereby I can recycle the packaging (our small 80L rubbish bin is less than one quarter full every week). And my final oilyrag suggestion is to run a household system which is “one product in use and 1 spare” (or more sometimes – 1 have 6 kg of soap powder in my cupboard right now) in the cupboard. This works out well as there are times the product is not at a reasonable price so we do not get one every month. This works particularly well with regards to cleaning products (I will often buy 2 spares if these are on special). -
20
Jul