Shopping-Monthly vs Weekly or daily (merged)

lostinrates

When i meal plan (i am not atm) i meal plan for about ten days. This leaves me four days for when i cannot be bothered and make storecupboard pasta, for evenings we get invited out or eat out, or for days i am not hungry. I would have enough to do the four days in the house (freezer or storecupboard) so shopping to fill the other days if it falls inconveniently, is not an issue.

This suits us because we do not have kids and so have the ability to be spontaneous and one days we donot eat fresh fruit or veg but storecupboard food, or popcorn (shameful i know) children do not suffer! It also works out with about how spontaneous we are in balance with how much we like to plan.

ZsaZsa

I dont have a set pattern to my big shop/meal plan, but I probably do a massive shop with cleaning products/ toiletries/ stuff the freezer etc for about £150-200 a month, with a top up of fresh fruit/veg, milk, special offers that I spot for about £10-15 every week/10 days. My meal plan is more flexible and I allow for special offers/yellow stickers etc. This seems to work out cheaper than when I had a much more rigid meal plan and could easily spend £100 week.

cherylim

Popperwell wrote: »

Cherylim,
I suppose you could try and have items in the freezer that could last more than a week and upto/past a month and if the dates are carefully chosen you could have two weeks of fresh food in the fridge.

If you like soup, cereal etc.. and the like that could go into a cupboard. Too many houses these days are short on space and many people are using unused rooms, cupboards in other rooms, drawers to store extra food or even storage boxes under the bed etc...

As there is only me here I don't mind if some of my food is on show. But if I don't use that room I can just close the door and it's hidden away.

Good Luck!;)

A majority of my food is already kept in the freezer. I'm not a fridge person because I'm a bit OCD about fresh food - won't use milk that's been open longer than 24 hours, or eat fruit or veg that's more than a few days old, etc.

For that reason, I buy frozen vegetables as well as frozen potato products and I freeze any meat I buy. We have a large fridge freezer, but unless my memories of childhood are skewed there seems to be so much less space in those freezer drawers than there was in my mum's fridge freezer when I was growing up!

All my bottled water is kept in storage boxes under the bed in our spare room - my fiance thinks it's a bit weird, but kitchen cupboards end up overloaded otherwise.

Popperwell

cherylim wrote: »

A majority of my food is already kept in the freezer. I'm not a fridge person because I'm a bit OCD about fresh food - won't use milk that's been open longer than 24 hours, or eat fruit or veg that's more than a few days old, etc.

For that reason, I buy frozen vegetables as well as frozen potato products and I freeze any meat I buy. We have a large fridge freezer, but unless my memories of childhood are skewed there seems to be so much less space in those freezer drawers than there was in my mum's fridge freezer when I was growing up!

All my bottled water is kept in storage boxes under the bed in our spare room - my fiance thinks it's a bit weird, but kitchen cupboards end up overloaded otherwise.

Well you are already doing most of what you should;)
The last fridge freezer I had was larger inside and I find the freezer is a bit small but as I am on my own I can just about manage.

So it may just be the model of freezer you have? If you keep milk and the like in the frideg at a cold enough temperture, a couple of days will be fine but out of everything I am most careful about dairy products.

Frozen Veg is sometimes better or as good as fresh.

You're doing fine...

Popperwell

I'm tidying up my food store at present and filling crates and I have less than I thought but I have still filled up approx six with tinned items and boxes. Another two with squashes, fruit juices and the like...

Then I have cupboards containing soups and the fridge/freezer. So that's probably enough really.

GreenFairy

Ideally I'd shop once a month for dried goods, tins, cleaning stuff, loo roll and then once a week for fruit and veg, dairy products and fresh meat. Unfortunately I'm being paid by the week at the moment (and not much at that) so am shopping week to week for the most part.

maman

I think it does rather depend on circumstances like storage, how close you are to shops, whether you have time to shop around, whether you drive or have to carry stuff...
Another variable is how disciplined you can be. Generally speaking, the more often you shop the more you spend.

Personally, I shop weekly in (usually) Aldis and Sainsbury's. I also visit a few other shops occasionally when I'm out and about (Farmfoods, Iceland, £shops, Lidl, Asda) to pick up odd bargains and favourites. So I have a storecupboard and well stocked freezer. Often all I need is fresh stuff so although I'm going weekly it's not a huge shop.

joedenise

I mealplan monthly. I do a big shop once a month covering freezer foods, toiletries, loo rolls, cleaning stuff etc plus anything extra I need for the 1st weeks meal plan and fresh fruit, veg, milk etc.

I then shop weekly but using as much as possible out of the freezer and cupboards.

As soon I as notice anything is getting low such as tins, packets etc I add them to my next week's shopping.

I still do a top up shop during the week for fruit as we seem to eat mountains of it at the moment. There's only 2 of us and I'm probably spending more than £10 a week on fruit! Have to say though it seems to be cheaper in winter because I'm not keen on apples & pears and won't buy things like out of season strawberries, pineapples etc and we probably eat far more veg as well in soups and stews.

Works for me.

Denise

DebtFree2012

Hiya

I have tried everything! Or at least it feels like it. I have finally settled on shopping once a week in Ald1 (and a farm shop fortnightly). I have not missed Mr T in the slightest until today when my HM base curry ran out. I need a few items which Ald1 don't sell and so I will need to collect tonight from Mr T. I will get what's on the list and that's it. I hate the shop now!

So every Sat/Sun I go to Aldi and get enough for the next weeks packed lunches (struggling to get things that will keep until Friday but I an managing) and I have spuds/onion that last a few weeks from the farm shop. I have a list of meals to pick from however I meal plan weekly prior to the shop. Currently I am trying to stick to my £150 budget for 4 of us (Us plus 2 LOs who don't take much feeding bar their packed lunches). I don't buy cleaning products other than fairy washing up liquid, detergent, white vinegar and bleach. I can do everything with this that I need to.

Sorry went intot too much detail there! Basically after a year of trying, I now shop once a week and make do if we run out of things. This requires meal planning in advance but is worth it.

xx

Pink.

Hi thefamousexcuse,

I've added your thread to our existing one on shopping weekly versus monthly so that you can read all the previous opinions.

Pink