Need to reduce my housekeeping budget urgently

skintbint_2

try quidco for cashback on various things - the mobile phone is a great way to get cashback. also if you havent done tesco online shop there is usually a £10 off first £50 spend - which is great if you buy the BOGOF's, special offers etc, stock up with all your usual tins, pulses, loo rolls, washing powder.

jasperconran

hi all, have just read thru this thread and have picked up some great ideas. I am seriously flawed in the whole batch cooking, meal planning thing. need to seriously sort this out. just wanted to say good luck to the op, im sure you will do well with getting your grocery budget down. sounds like you are doing a good job already:T have subscribed and will be watching with interest!

Kimitatsu

meliaalison wrote: »

Thank you all so much I can not believe how much useful help and advice I have got off here in the last few days, my OH is getting a bit sick of me raving about it lol. I have just been on bargain foods and ordered 10 bags of flour at 35p a bag very impressed have spent £12 on various bits and the best thing is as it is in leeds I get freee delivery .

Brilliant if you can get free delivery! I would recommend that you subscribe to the approved food thread on here too and their newsletter, they always seem to have more things than bargain foods and tend to do discount codes over some weekends too.

Cooking mama I do have a slow cooker gathering dust on the shelf alongside my bread maker, ice cream maker, juicer and pasta maker :S, I will go to that link asap so thank-you.

Would definitely recommend getting the slow cooker and the bread maker out! I put my bread maker on a timer (if it doesnt have a timer then you can get one for the plug fairly cheaply - I do that with my coffee maker for the mornings!!) so that when I get down the bread is already made Slow cooker is brilliant for cheaper cuts of meat and you can bulk it out with lots of meat and lentils/pulses.

Kimitatsu I have 2 co-ops a tesco extra, tesco and tesco express and an asda and a lidl and netto all within walking distance, I have a sainsbury's and m+s food iceland and home bargains all within 5 mins drive, I have a cosco card (i buy milk, eggs and dog and cat food there) unfortunately morrisons is too far away to make it a feasible ever day option but would travel if bargain warranted it lol have tried talking my husband into healthy eating and it has always been a no but this morning I pointed out that if he wanted a new mobile phone we would have to make saving somewhere and he has accepted the whole 5oz of meat idea however he also seems to be implying that the only reason he eats so much is because I cook it (I did not ask him to go for 2nds of last nights tea lol!).

Wow - you are really lucky! All of my supermarkets are 10 miles plus away, so I use www.mysupermarket.com to compare prices for the things on my list, I can usually save money on branded items. Other items I tend to bulk buy and keep a dry store of tins and jars in the garage so that I dont run out and have to go to the supermarket every 5 mins (always fatal!)

Hope the lentil dahl was nice

meliaalison

Right well went into town yesterday to get a hair cut (last one for a while so decided to make the most of it!) whilst there I picked up some spices and some lovely looking garlic from a stall in the market at less than half the price of it in Mr T. Anyways as per when I got home I was tired and the thought of cooking didn't excite me so in cums my hero of an OH and he made T as per ingredients so we had lamb curry with my £2.50 woopsied lamb and lentil dahl, rice and home made chappati's, have to say it was absoloutely wonderful the flavours were lovely and am shocked that the children ate lentil dahl (total cost for 5 people £5 including enough left over to take to uni on monday for my lunch )anyway it was also amazing because I normally cook a lamb curry, prawn curry, rice then we have onion bahji's and naan bread and yoghurt sauce (usual cost £30) and my hubby normally goes back for 2nds but last night he couldn't even finish what he put on his plate and as for me after I had mine I went to a party where food was provided and I didn't want any because I was full all night and am still feeling full now so I am thinking that maybe this fruggle eating may also help my waste line woop woop two birds with one stone and all that. (I need to loose 4 stone and would really like to do it before I have to squeeze myself into a ball dress for graduation ball!)
Kim (am I okay to shorten?) is home made bread as economical as shop bought stuff because I would love to get bread maker out but I always found that the ingredients needed kind of defeated the object (or ar there some bread making frugalities that i am unaware of??) Now at the moment I buy the occassional full priced loaf but top it up with woopsies of between 10-60p per loaf dependent on what it is so could I make it myself for less? (have to say I love the smell and taste of home made bread and the thought of waking up to it in the morning is appealing )
Jasper (again I have shortened sorry) I have found this whole site to be inspiring and very interesting, I am also not one for batch cooking and my attempts at meal planning have usually lasted about 2 days before I get bored. However the one thing that I have noticed from this site is that there is not a one size fits all solution to this budgeting thing for me I have decided to go with the flow a bit. I am writting down everything that I spend (this has made me realise how often I spend without even thinking about it!). I am also going to visit Mr T on a daily basis which for some people would be a nightmare but it really is just on my doorstep and I think it would be a shame to waste the woopsies opportunities. Yesterday I went in to pick up my duvet covers.....yay 2 duvet sets for £3.91 go me and some mint to go in last nights curry and managed to pick up some liver for £1.11 for a huuuugggggge bag of it so that is tonights tea sorted along with the woopsied veggies I have bought over last cpl of days and 60 eggs for £4.10 so that is omlette for tomorrows T and eggs for brekkie and I will make up some egg mayo (the kids love this) and still have plenty left. I will have to be determined and only go in to look at woopsies and only buy the woopsies which are needed but so far my total for food spent is £112 but i have enough meat etc to last me for the month. I personally find the more rigid I am the more likely I am to fail (this includes with my diets of which there have been many ) so this whole go with the flow whilst watching what I am spending will hopefully work. Have to say though I have been very inspired by this site I joined in 2007 and havent really looked since and cant believe I am going to say this but Yay to my dog for breaking my toe !

meliaalison

had to add to this thread just had the most amazing brekkie had some scrambled eggs (58 to go lol) with some tomatoes chopped into it that were hanging around on the work top edging their way to the bin but I rescued them just in time! some corriander left over from last nights curry, a tiny piece of smoked salmon that I had left in fridge (would also usually have ended up in the bin some time next week and some chappati's made with left over mix from last night Wow it was lovely ) and taking off the left overs that would have been thrown away leaves me with eggs at a cost of 14p mmmm

knithryn

A couple more suggestions.

1. If OH tends to scoff the last portion of dinner, why not put the dinner on the plates (portion controlled) and before everyone starts to eat, the last portion goes into the freezable tub to cool. I find this effectively puts people off having the last portion. You can then put the cooking pot into the sink to soak while you are eating.

2. Use a 'different' handbag for your food shopping. Only put the week's food budget into it (or the months). That is all you have. No cards for payment. Then if you are popping out on a daily basis, this is the handbag you take.

3. Divide your budget into sections - meat, dairy, fruit and veg, groceries (eg flour, loo roll) and apportion roughly equal amounts of money to each. You then get to the stage of looking for the cheap fruit (ie seasonal and on offer) because you are spending a bit more on a piece of meat, or you buy the cheapest washing powder so you can afford a Sunday Roast.

Sounds like you're doing well!

adelight

my mum also works full time and goes to college with quite a commute(but not 3hrs!) so on days where she would be back really late or was busy she used to leave notes to me/my sister to cook dinner:
she'd leave a hm curry/chili to defrost in the kitchen in the day with a note on the lid saying "put rice on at six and microwave curry".
putting prepped veg in a tuperware next to other ingredients and leaving a cookbook open.
we got into a routie, and now i'm not there my mum just asks sisterto cook X and it's done!

oooh and lidl/aldi! i have access to s'burys, waitrose and lidl and i've found lidl's flour is almost half the price of the others! if there's a home bargains near you that's a great place for cheap toiletries & snack foods. they can be 1/4 of the rrp

one last thing... experiment with different beans and pulses as they're very cheap, healthy and some like soy beans & black beans have a very satisfying "meaty" texture. some take a while so i boil them til almost done then freeze them in portions.

CurlyTop

I too have been amazed at how much I can spend on food shopping and so over the last eighteen months, have managed to reduce it down from £550 per month for the two of us to about £200 and this includes the household stuff, for the two of us. I used to just shop all in the one shop but now I tend to do Aldi for fruit and veg (fresher and better quality, as well as cheaper), eggs, yoghurts and their frackadelen meatballs which I split down and get 2 meals from (they also did well when reviewed by a nutritionist who said that they have a very low fat content, fab with pasta and sauce), iceland - frozen veg; local butchers (more value for money and fresher), home bargains for loo roll, toothpaste, bisto (never quite mastered the art of doing gravy !!), soap, biscuits, and anything else they have on offer. Tesco or Asda fill in the blanks. I tend to blitz these over the weekend of payday (we don't have a car and so I'm out with my trolley). I then top up through the week for fresh bread for sandwiches and milk. All in all, can be seen as a lot of work but the savings are better in my pocket. Good luck. Oh, forgot to add that I used to be a Kelloggs girl but have now switched to Aldi's own multigrain hoops (not much dissimilar to Cheerios and their own version of Cocopops) at 95p for a 600g box, they do me fine.

dom300186

for house hold products i would advise you to look at how clean is your house via channel 4 website, as you can buy natural ingredients that are so cheap and work such as white vinegar/bicarb soda/lemon juice etc and these three things get even stains out/ ovens etc anything you can think of.

I've started buying asda smart price wash powder big box £1 and some fab conditioner that smells gorge at 80p saving me £6 per month, and they smell and look great.
Make a budget for your shopping and make a list and dont go over your lst and stick to it.
I make all my mals from scratch and dont buy any sauces as i make my own our house their is only me, OH and my 3 year old son and cat, and our shop is £40 a week max and i dont go over as i write the things i need and plan my meals ahead.

miggy

That breakfast you made with eggs and leftovers sounded scrummy! I must admit my best results at cooking often use leftovers: over the years I've developed a sense of what might work together.
Remember if you make HM bread that you can try out flavourings there too. Scraps of cheese and onion are obvious ones, so is bacon, but just be inventive. Also, if you are boiling potatoes, save the liquid to use in bread making - you get a lovely texture and it adds a few vitamins to the bread.