Grocery shopping - NSM style

Some of you expressed an interest in how I was able to go to the grocery store today and buy a month's worth of groceries for me and 2-5 kids on $216. I promised that I would explain, so here it is.

My first step was to make up a menu. 

Keep in mind that I don't have all 5 kids with me all of the time. The older 3 spend half of their time at their father's house, so on those nights I generally don't plan meals - we either eat leftovers, or I make something small for the 3 of us who are here. I plan the meals for when we are all here. The kids also eat breakfast at school on some days, and also eat lunch there - so that cuts down on my meal planning a lot (until summer break).

Once I have the menu made up, I go through meal by meal and list out all of the ingredients on my grocery list. After I get the first draft of the list made, I go through the cupboards and cross off anything that I already have, and double-check to see if I need anything else. At that point I have my final grocery list.

I don't really do coupons. Our grocery store sends some out based on our purchases, and so I use those because they're actually for stuff that I use. But I don't have the time or the patience to do much more than that with coupons. Not to mention that I don't have the storage space for 873 cans of tuna or 47 cases of toilet paper. I buy what I need - period.

So....what did I buy?

The stuff that's edited out is just what was duplicated when I took the pictures - so what you see is every single item that we got.

Yes, there's a bottle of Mt. Dew and a king-sized Snickers up there at the top. We were hungry. And thirsty. But other than that, there is no junk food on there. I don't buy cookies and chips and crackers - I make all of our snacks from scratch. It's not that I think I'm SuperMom or anything like that - it's just cheaper. And while I'm (obviously) not a health food nut, if I make the stuff I at least know what's in it.

I splurged a little bit and got a 10 pound package of ground beef this time although we didn't really need that much - but it was on sale and this way we'll have it. I'll divide it up into 7-8 packages tonight and stick it in the freezer to use for meals throughout the month.

There's also not a ton of fresh produce on there - and there are a couple of reasons for that. To be completely honest, we don't eat as much as we should (although we are getting better about it). Also, where I now work I can get some produce and lots of dairy stuff at a slight discount AND it's super fresh - plus I don't have to have the cash for it because they just take our purchases out of our paychecks. So I will be getting more of that stuff throughout the month, but not in large quantities so that it will be fresh and not go to waste.

But as of right now, there is enough stuff in this house to make everything on that menu - plus some. So although I will have to get a few more things throughout the month, for the most part I am done grocery shopping for the next 4 weeks. I also plan to keep track of the little purchases that I make here and there and get a better idea of the total amount that I spend over these next 4 weeks, but I'm guessing that I can keep the total under $300.




PLEASE NOTE: Some of you know where I live, and/or where I shop. It's obvious that this is a Kroger store, but let's just leave it at that, ok? And I am NOT going to say where I work, so don't ask - and if you know, please don't say it. I hate to even have to bring this up, but I've had to do some filtering over the past couple of weeks so I thought I'd just mention it here. I know I put a lot of my life out here for everyone to see - but that doesn't mean that I want to give the wackos and nutjobs directions to my front door.

I have a plan...

Earlier this evening, I mentioned that I was formulating a plan - but I didn't say what it was.

Well, here it is: the reveal.

Seriously, it's not that big of a deal. Well, it kind of is. But not really. 

I always say that I'm going to plan out my month of meals so that when I get my money towards the end of the month, I can do one huge grocery shopping trip and be done with it. Sometimes I do it, and sometimes I don't. What usually ends up happening is that on that day, I spend a couple of hours paying bills, then run some errands, and then race into the store "just to get something for tonight" and then go home. Then the next day I get just a few more things - and so on and so on, and I end up running out of stuff and it's really annoying.

So, since we didn't have to go anywhere tonight, I sat down and started making a menu for the next month - with the help of so many wonderful people on my facebook page. But I made the menu, and then I made the grocery list - more or less.

Both of them are really pretty rough drafts at this point - I'll probably rearrange a few days on the menu because I forgot about an after-school activity or something like that, but for the most part, my menu and my grocery list for the next month is DONE. I can tweak it some between now and Wednesday, but now as soon as the kids are in school I can pay the bills and go to the store before I go to work, and all will be good.

This is something that I really want to stick to this month - with me working now, my time is even more limited, so doing this should really help to eliminate some of the stress and chaos that I deal with on a normal basis - theoretically, at least.

So that's one problem solved.

Now to figure out how to get my van running again. And to get The Dude back up on his feet. And to get moved into a bigger house.

Winning the lottery would definitely be a big help right about now. But since that's not going to happen, it's just one battle at a time.

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Don't forget about this.

We still need your help.

:)