Saving on my weekly shop

Norman_Bean

Well done Jim!

I find meal planning around what you already have in saves loads.

Also not sure if anyone else has mentioned it but try cutting your dishwasher tablets in half. Works just as well as a whole one and saves money :money:
Keep up the good work

Norman

digitalphase

This has been an interesting thread, and I am glad the OP has been able to save some money

We spend around £300-400 a month on our shopping, just for two of us. This includes all cleaning stuff, and stuff for my OH's packed lunches.

We need to try and get it down, and have worked at it but apart from a couple of weeks being cheaper, we don't seem to notice a large difference.

We used to live near a large town so had a choice of supermarkets, Sainsbury's being the nearest but most expensive. Asda the cheapest but furthest away. We used to shop at Aldi sometimes, and they have a great veg and cold meat section, but too many tempting desserts

We have moved now, and find home shopping the easiest. It does seem to help us keep costs down as you can see the total price all the time. I try and cook double for chillis and spag bols, then freeze half.

I will take on board some tips from this thread, and try more frozen veg. All we get at the moment is peas and sweetcorn. Is it better to steam or boil the frozen veg?

We need to cut down as expecting a baby next year, so have to draw our horns in now. Bonus is I am not drinking, so our alcohol consumption will drop! Just weekend treat for OH.

nickwill_2

nimbo wrote: »

i prep the night before, and don't even bother keeping it in the fride overnight..... i never have the heating on in my kitchen, so it remains below 5 degrees overnight.

as i wilk through the kitchen in the morning i flick a switch and come home to stew. mmmmmmmmmmmm

i may make stew tomorrow.

I fill the crockpot in the evening and using a timer plug, leave it to run overnight, of course, you could set the start/end time to coincide with your return from work!

artybear

Hello,

there are some brilliant tips on this thread, personally I find meal planning the way to go. Although I have to keep it quite flexible because I know I will never fancy the meal I have planner for that night. To cut down food shopping the O/s have some brilliant tips. I also find this website very helpful http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/ . It is a monthly planner which allows a family of four to live for a week on £100, I have used this loads for two of us and it works brilliantly. There will also soon be a christmas planner which feeds a family of 4 for £25 for the whole of Christmas week, including the full works on Christmas day.

Hope it is of some use to you

xxxxxxxxxx

Primula

Great thread, and it's on the weekly email too this week! I struggle with keeping my food bill down due to bad planning, well actually due to no planning! and due to a lot of wasteage. I'm going to have a look at the website artybear recommended - it's feed a family of four for £100 for a month! OMG, if I could even do it for £200 I would be over the moon!

JWF1958

Keeping a note of every penny I spend is now a habit - I've been doing it for years. It's a bit of a confessional at times, making me realise how much I spend on choc & other indulgences. Yes only a pound at a time, but if it's several times a week, well, you get the picture. 16p notebook from Wilkos.

Have just discovered Indian food stall at local market. 5KG basmati rice for £6.50 - I'll compare that with Morrisons next time I'm there. Thank you St Delia for your foolproof method for cooking rice. Look out for bogofs, but only for stuff you would buy anyway. I tend to walk into town once a week, buy stuff that's cheaper and better quality than the supermarket, like fruit'n'veg, Wilkos, Superdrug, etc, then catch the bus home.

Have recently been made redundant (again) so have time to enjoy cooking and baking. But also a challenge to cook something other than spaghetti, 'cooking bacon' and cabbage every day (plus home grown garlic, plus a spoonful from the jar at the back of the fridge for some 'je ne sais quoi'!).

misscousinitt

Well done Jim. I did an experiment last month when I went to do my big shop. I put all the stuff into mysupermarket.com and for what we buy personally - Tesco were still the cheapest compared to the others. I guess it depends what sort of things you buy, what you cook and of course its down to personal preference and availability of shops in your area.

Keep up the good work - glad its worked for you.

ashbash11

It's worth also noting the TMF thread

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/1255347

I've saved on my shopping doing this.

HTH :j

Ashbash11

spannie1000

Hi there we do loads of what others have mentioned and it's saved us a fortune.
We all drink mainly water at home, and squash is a treat and juice is for breakfast only.
We also split dishwasher tablets in half and maybe about one in 10 washes one or two items have to be re-washed, but this is a small price to pay for halving the cost of these - also you have to get cheaper ones without the "power ball" bit as they can't be split!
We also NEVER buy brand items, as these are always dearer than supermarket's own, unless there's some amazing offer on, in which case where possible we buy as much as is physically possible to store. We also don't buy pre prepared foods much and we avoid snacky stuff - if kids or adults are really hungry they can have fruit or a slice of bread and butter - not crisps or biscuits or other expensive stuff full of air!
I always read the price per unit small print in supermarkets when choosing what brand/size to buy, and we rule out brands or own brands that we can't stand.(we hate morrisons own bran flakes but their other cereals are fab).
One thing we do do which has been mentioned is we don't buy ANY gimmicky cleaning products. Think 1940's and you can't go wrong. I invested in some good quality dishcloths and some of the e-cloths (yes they do work, but not always!) and we use bleach, cream cleaner and liquid cleaner, and washing up liquid pretty much for everything in the house.
We also invested in some expensive foaming hand wash (£3.95 each!! Outrageous!!) and just use the same foaming dispensers refilled with cheap handwash (53p from sainsburys is our preferred choice as it dilutes well and doesn't seprarte once mixed with water - the blue one), and we only need about 25% liquid soap and the rest water to refill it! It goes a bit quicker but our liquid soap undiluted lasts about twice as long now we use it to refill the foaming dispensers.
Also maybe you could plant a few veg - we saved a fortune in tomatoes last summer - will be expanding our repetoire of pot grown veg this coming year. The beauty of growing in pots is there is less trouble with pests and anyone with an outside space can attempt to grow something, in fact balconies and window boxes work better from a disease and pest perspective (maybe this bit belongs in another part of the forum!!)

Good luck! I feel inspired again to revisit my shopping habits - thanks to all those who posted before!

Annax

spannie1000

Oops forgot to mention in my last post we don't use kitchen roll or blue disposable cloths any more either - just have an array of cloths (many of them old tea towels and flannels, but table wiping cloths we bought a few new ones) and we keep them for specific purposes (keep floor and wee accident ones separate from ones used to wipe spills off the furniture etc!) and they go in the wash every time used. I've had the same 5 bamboo dishcloths, which I put in the wash after a day's use, for 3 years.