March 2020 Grocery Challenge

PipneyJane

thriftwizard said:

£80 spent at the market yesterday & today, on everyday fresh stuff for the coming week, plus an extra sack of spuds. (Which were £9.99 yesterday & £11.99 today... such is life! ) I wouldn't normally buy these for a couple of weeks, as we still have half a sack, but we can store them well & I'd rather get them in before the price goes much higher. The situation in our posh supermarket is ludicrous; people queueing up at 7.30 this morning (it opens at 8) to try to grab some of any loo roll that might have mysteriously appeared overnight. Pasta, rice & tinned tomatoes are still vanishing as soon as they come in. Talking to various friends, people are evidently anticipating a more-or-less complete lock-down at some point before too long, and preparing for that. 

They obviously aren’t Old Style Frugalistas like us.

Talking to my DH when we did our Big Shop earlier this month, I pointed out the obvious with our style of shopping while he was grumbling about the behaviour of others.  We don’t need to panic buy because we always have basic stuff in stock: rice, flour, tinned tomatoes. We buy the 10kg bags of flour and rice when they’re on offer.  (When opened, they store in the largest Lock-n-Lock boxes (each box takes 5kg), so we only start looking for the next offer when the second box is open.).    We never pay more than 25p for a can of chopped tomatoes, because we buy them by the 24-can shrink wrapped tray.  (2 trays per shrink wrap.). End of the world happens, we’ll live on home made pasta and tomato sauce or eat our way through the dried bean mountain.  That’ll be after the contents of the freezer is eaten, so a good 6 months away.

- Pip. (As for toilet paper, we stocked up a month or so back to get a 10p/litre off on petrol offer.  We have 4-5 months supply in stock.)

sarahj1986

Hello all
we have now gone over our budget for March.

we live in Spain where the restrictions are becoming more and more by the hour. My husband went and got enough of certain items to last us a month. The rumours are we are to go into lock down (as in not even allowed to leave our house) from Monday with the borders closing. How true this is I don’t know. I’ve tried to stock us up at least to see is through to the end of March with the panic buying items (milk, loo roll, nappies, wipes, water) we have enough to last us well into April. If it was just hubby and I then I probably wouldn’t worry but I cannot go without these items for my daughter. Selfish as it seems I’m putting my daughters needs before anybody else. 

Jacs205

£9.88 b and m last night and £4.99 at pound shop today.  Will definitely be over this month because if I find loo rolls and pasta anywhere I'm buying a month's worth though I doubt I'll find it easily

zafiro1984

I'm glad I did a months shopping at the beginning of the month as an attempt to stop going out shopping. I didn't really do it because of the coronavirus but on reflection I'm glad I did a months shopping then. My meal plans are 32 lunches, 32 dinners, 32 puddings.I don't do a day by day plan but more of a mix and match as to how I'm feeling and what time I have. 

So far so good I haven't been shopping since, I haven't wasted anything and it feels like I may even have saved some money. Just had a friend call by to help (DH is putting a new set of stairs in) and he says it's like a ghost town out there, he has never known the supermarket so quiet and what normally takes him an hour to get here took him just 40mins. 
178.01/200

StartingAgainAt29

StartingAgainAt29 said:

StartingAgainAt29 said:

StartingAgainAt29 said:

Just spent £20.36 in Aldi, so that's £67.98 left for the month

I spent £18.59 in Aldi today, bought an extra box of cat food to start a little stock pile just in case! That's £38.95 spent, £51.05 left for the month. I have 10 meals in the freezer that I'm going to work through over the next couple of weeks so I anticipate spending a similar amount next week.

Spent £1.65 today in Sainsburys for the guacamole that had been eluding me in Aldi...so that's £40.60 spent, so £49.40 left!

Spent £1.20 in Sainsburys on bananas....so I've spent £41.80, £48.20 left.

Anzac_Biscuit

PipneyJane said:

thriftwizard said:

£80 spent at the market yesterday & today, on everyday fresh stuff for the coming week, plus an extra sack of spuds. (Which were £9.99 yesterday & £11.99 today... such is life! ) I wouldn't normally buy these for a couple of weeks, as we still have half a sack, but we can store them well & I'd rather get them in before the price goes much higher. The situation in our posh supermarket is ludicrous; people queueing up at 7.30 this morning (it opens at 8) to try to grab some of any loo roll that might have mysteriously appeared overnight. Pasta, rice & tinned tomatoes are still vanishing as soon as they come in. Talking to various friends, people are evidently anticipating a more-or-less complete lock-down at some point before too long, and preparing for that. 

They obviously aren’t Old Style Frugalistas like us.

Talking to my DH when we did our Big Shop earlier this month, I pointed out the obvious with our style of shopping while he was grumbling about the behaviour of others.  We don’t need to panic buy because we always have basic stuff in stock: rice, flour, tinned tomatoes. We buy the 10kg bags of flour and rice when they’re on offer.  (When opened, they store in the largest Lock-n-Lock boxes (each box takes 5kg), so we only start looking for the next offer when the second box is open.).    We never pay more than 25p for a can of chopped tomatoes, because we buy them by the 24-can shrink wrapped tray.  (2 trays per shrink wrap.). End of the world happens, we’ll live on home made pasta and tomato sauce or eat our way through the dried bean mountain.  That’ll be after the contents of the freezer is eaten, so a good 6 months away.

- Pip. (As for toilet paper, we stocked up a month or so back to get a 10p/litre off on petrol offer.  We have 4-5 months supply in stock.)

I've been thinking the same. We don't buy in bulk like that but we do have a well stocked pantry and I reckon I could feed us easily for two weeks and more carefully/boringly for a month. We might get very very sick of lentils but we'd manage  
I haven't seen any toilet paper, tissues or paper towels at all on the shelves for weeks, and the pasta supplies are low too.

pamsdish

Anzac_Biscuit said:

PipneyJane said:

thriftwizard said:

£80 spent at the market yesterday & today, on everyday fresh stuff for the coming week, plus an extra sack of spuds. (Which were £9.99 yesterday & £11.99 today... such is life! ) I wouldn't normally buy these for a couple of weeks, as we still have half a sack, but we can store them well & I'd rather get them in before the price goes much higher. The situation in our posh supermarket is ludicrous; people queueing up at 7.30 this morning (it opens at 8) to try to grab some of any loo roll that might have mysteriously appeared overnight. Pasta, rice & tinned tomatoes are still vanishing as soon as they come in. Talking to various friends, people are evidently anticipating a more-or-less complete lock-down at some point before too long, and preparing for that. 

They obviously aren’t Old Style Frugalistas like us.

Talking to my DH when we did our Big Shop earlier this month, I pointed out the obvious with our style of shopping while he was grumbling about the behaviour of others.  We don’t need to panic buy because we always have basic stuff in stock: rice, flour, tinned tomatoes. We buy the 10kg bags of flour and rice when they’re on offer.  (When opened, they store in the largest Lock-n-Lock boxes (each box takes 5kg), so we only start looking for the next offer when the second box is open.).    We never pay more than 25p for a can of chopped tomatoes, because we buy them by the 24-can shrink wrapped tray.  (2 trays per shrink wrap.). End of the world happens, we’ll live on home made pasta and tomato sauce or eat our way through the dried bean mountain.  That’ll be after the contents of the freezer is eaten, so a good 6 months away.

- Pip. (As for toilet paper, we stocked up a month or so back to get a 10p/litre off on petrol offer.  We have 4-5 months supply in stock.)

I've been thinking the same. We don't buy in bulk like that but we do have a well stocked pantry and I reckon I could feed us easily for two weeks and more carefully/boringly for a month. We might get very very sick of lentils but we'd manage  
I haven't seen any toilet paper, tissues or paper towels at all on the shelves for weeks, and the pasta supplies are low too.

It appears to me the older generation, like myself 70 Boxing Day, will cope, we have store cupboards and shop bargains, I have done very little shopping for quite some time as trying to use up my stocks, I know I can still live, and live well, for several weeks, tins of soup may get used up at last, and all the dried produce.
 I am not sure if proud or ashamed, bulk bought 3 ply Velvet toilet rolls on offer in January and still have 3 x 24 pack.

Suffolk_lass

If anybody wants a really simple, cheap pasta recipe it is just flour, salt, eggs (some cheaper recipes are less egg and either water or olive oil) - there is one here. We are carrying on as normal here but I always buy my things on offer (got my coffee at £4.99 a jar instead of £6.95 this week so I bought 4, as I always do). This is easy for me with only a tiny number of cases in Suffolk for now. Still plenty of toilet rolls in the shops locally

pamsdish

Panic mode,,,, only 2 jars of coffee left and 1 of those to be opened later today, quick trip to B&M, 5 jars of coffeee, I do use 1 a week, 3 sticks of black pudding, none available last 2 visits and a large milk for my neighbour. £24.04 spent.

elsiepac

Hey guys, I'm sorry this thread was never quite right!! New editing tools... well, less editing tools should I say at the moment!!! Anyway, I've put the April thread up now as I won't have time in the week and it's a big ole task in this new format!  Hope you are all doing well!
Do we have anyone who has had to self-isolate or has been quarantined?  If so, how are you getting on?
I work in IT and our customers are now looking at how they can achieve home working for their staff if they need to.  We all go into the office every day still at the minute, and it's super busy, but we can work from home ourselves very easily if we get to that point.  We've had one guy in work had to self-isolate as he was in contact with a confirmed case, but that's the closest I've come to it.
The smallish Tesco in the village my town kind of joins with has run out of chickpeas which I'm sad about and there are only the expensive branded tinned toms and passatas left.  I keep a good stock cupboard though so I'm ok for a minute.  Glad that for the last year I've been doing Amaz0n subscribe and save on loo roll bulk packs though as everywhere here seems to have run out! Whereas I still have 6.5 9-packs in my cupboard (as I over estimated the frequency with which I would need it lol and ended up with too much) so at least I can share with family and friends if they get stuck.  I'm sure this hoarding is a temporary thing though - I mean, there's only so much people can have in, right?