October 2026 Grocery Challenge

thriftwizard

@karenccs67, so sorry for your loss; don't be too hard on yourself if it takes a while to get into the swing of budgetary things, you have enough on your plate.

A mildly tooth-gritting £90.66 spent at L!dls this morning; I'll swear we didn't need much and I did stick to my list. The upward trend is just relentless…

Suffolk_lass

I have done one moderately enormous shop and a cupboard stock up and am almost at half my budgeted spend for the month - £140.14/£300. I bought a 6 pack of 2L still water to live in the toolshed. Just in case the water infrastructure fails here, as recommended. We have talked about also filling two 10L containers we use when camping, to ensure we have some for animals and washing ourselves if it comes to pass. We can use the water and replenish it regularly for relatively little inconvenience.

I don't need to buy extra stores as I am confident we have more than enough (and because of regular electricity interruptions, we have a generator and logs here too!).

I am off back to Scotland next week for another week. It's just a whole day's driving each way but apart from two tanks of fuel, I don't mind. Looking after my Mum while my sis and her husband are away on holiday for three weeks - I'm just doing the middle one. Mr Sl can pretty much eat what he likes while I'm away, without shopping

TravelCrystal

@karenccs67 so sorry to hear about your husband. Look after yourself.

Decided to go to Lidell’s and spend my £5 off on £40 spend and also £3 voucher that had accumulated on points. Used the £3 to get 240 Tetley tea bags as I hate separating out the cheaper ones and a cake to go with our mid morning drink. £2.50 spent

The other shopping was 3 x mature cheddar, 4 x Greek yogurt’s, a large bag of frozen pollock, a huge laundry liquid (will last out the year) potatoes, fresh coffee, butter x2, toilet rim blocks, frozen peas and pineapple, peppers, baked beans, garlic, s and s sauce, apple sauce, penne x2, pate, crumpets and Tom puree. £44.81 spent

£268.05 so far this month, but a lot of what I bought will last well into November and beyond. Ocado coming next week with Christmas bits and fresh f and v

The weather is cooling a bit now so I have decided tonight’s tea will be some spicy pork meatballs part cooked then holy toaded in the oven with some green beans and carrots.
Hope everyone is having a good week

T.C

Greying_Pilgrim

@karenccs67 - so sorry to hear about your husband.

Spends to declare. I needed milk, but purposely selected to walk into the town centre to use the M&$ foodall, as a) their milk is the same price as Leedle/aldee and - I'm assuming (?) - regional co0p members price (c0op is closer tho). I bought milk £1.65, 2 x cannellini jarred beans in m&$ for a total of £2.75. I then popped into barginzofhome, to pick up some hand san (different budget), but spotted they have gone into the microwaveable pouches of grains (they've been doing rice for yonks, but I'd not seen the BBQ or Mexican flavoured grains before), whilst looking at those, I spotted their red lentil and coconut curry pouches (79p ea). Not something I would normally, purchase, as I can make it from scratch at home, However, we've a holiday coming up which will be reliant on self-catering to keep it affordable, and I think that these pouches will be good to have as a standby if we find ourselves hungry, but time or equipment poor (not used the accommodation choice before). I will buy some pouched rice too, and maybe a tinned veg curry and some ambient naan. Not always the most nutrient dense choice, and definitely not a patch on HM, but it will be cheaper than a takeaway, and provide either an emergency option, or a lazy option, if I feel I'm a galley slave on me own hols! 🤣£1.58 spent on 2 pouches.

Total food spend today = £4.33

Off to amend siggie figgie.

Greying X

leftatthetrafficlights

@karenccs67 - I'm so sorry that you are in such a sad situation, I wish you strength as you go through such a difficult time.

My October spends have kicked off today - I had a £25 waitrose voucher to spend so bought the things from there that we love, have reasonably frequently and are fairly expensive (in my opinion!) I spent £39.94 in real money so that's what I'm taking out of the grocery budget. For that, I got a plain tofu, a smoked tofu, 5 mushroom tofu, 6 burgers, 1 box pulled shitake mushrooms, 6 apples, 4 lemons, 1kg frozen berries, 2 sourdough pizzas and some laundry liquid and fabric conditioner for a friend as she's been lamenting the fact it's been unavailable near her 😂

October GC: £39.94/£350

Soontobeoap

First spend for this month was £22.34 spent in Aldi to get basics for the week

Another estimated £4.40 spent on bitter, wraps, and fairy liquid as Dah didn't keep receipt.

£26.74 altogether

Finstickle

Well I went to Lidl but didn't get close to the £60 needed for my £5 voucher. I suppose I could have got there but that would hae felt to contrary and I would have needed to spend another £15. I fon't need any alcohol as a recent birthday saw me restocked by generous gifts and I couldn't think what to get easily.

There has been a few bigger spends so far

£38.50 - on a discounted Tesco Giftcard. I just put an amount on to cover incidentals so I get the benefit without having to get new ones each time i need a broccoli! -

£14.65 - A couple of little co-op stops

£48.33 - on the weekly shop at Lidl

£28 - Who Gives a Crap. This tends to do about 6 months and saves us running out. I also really hate how much it costs so much prefer to spend in one hit

£29.60 - I've bought a year's supply of Seep sponges. I hate the yellow and green ones and can see them disintegrating in my sink so thought I'd give them a try.

The two subscriptions are having a big impact on my budget but should work out cost effectively across the year.

Total:

£159.08/£350

dollypeeps

good morning GCers

Coming in at £86.13

Aldi £7.14, Lidl £50.96 and Tesco £28.03

Let’s see how October goes….

I am noticing that prices are on the up even more :(

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Afternoon GC'rs

Spending to report confess to 🫤 I spent a helluva lot of dosh today 🫤Some of it was stocking up, several items were to go in the 'holiday' box (microwave rice), but heavens to betsy, in between restocking stores, buying food to eat and one or two freezer items 😱 One item that did push costs skyhigh was vanilla paste. I was debating whether to get the extract or paste, and whilst the paste was £1 more, I figured it was easier to use - sometimes too much of the liquid goes in a cake. Hopefully prudence will pay me back at some point…….. 🫤 So Sainsbugs does seem expensive at £43.57 for the shop, but I did get the vanilla from there, so £33.57 for food is a bit more 'normal'.

I then went to Leedle. Got a green box today. There were 5 or 6 I think. I was pleased (enough) with my selection until I got home and found that the one avocado in the box is only fit for compost ☹️ Note to self, CHECK BETTER. Everything else in the box is ok, and useable - I will need to quickly trim the leeks though, so that they will keep better. £23.78 spent there.

Then it was on to barginzofhome. That was supposed to be a nuts, dried fruit and herbs stock up, but I spotted a recipe on the Leedle app for a butter bean and gnocchi bake, so I got some sun-dried tommies and some gnocchi too. If the recipe works, I may consider it in the Christmas rotation - maybe with 'fresh' gnocchi. £9.66 spent in hB.

Finally I trotted over to a small m&$ foodall. I wanted some of the jarred butter beans (see above recipe idea), and didn't know if this store would have them. On entering the store I saw their display of (culinary) pumpkins and decided to get an onion/potimarron type. As they were £1.25 each, I picked a big one. I found the beans, and I also spotted a YS'd pack of white finger rolls. Not the biggest discount, but I like using the smaller finger rolls when we have 'hot dogs'. Normal size hot dog rolls tend to be too long, and it becomes too wodgy to eat. £2.95 spent there.

So, hiding behind the sofa, peeking through my fingers, that means I spent a whopping £79.96 today 😱Even if we take out the extraordinary vanilla purchase, that's still a helluva lorra dosh 🫤 I'd like to say I got some yummy treats for that, but not.a.single.one ☹️ Interestingly EVERY shop I went into today was super quiet. Perhaps it was simply my timing, perhaps the weather put off folks, but it does make you wonder.

Off to amend siggie figgie.

Greying X

thriftwizard

I'm just adding £13.05 on supplies for tonight's curry-&-games-night with DS3. Really not necessities, but I'm tired! Our mattress is collapsing & has become wickedly uncomfortable; my fault, as a couple of years back I bought a cheap "old stock" mattress originally made for an upmarket, expensive brand, apparently from a fire-damaged warehouse; it certainly had smears of smoke on the packaging. What I didn't realise was that memory foam degrades over time, as well as through exposure to heat, and they stopped selling these in 2014. So it's at least 12 years old now & has been exposed to excess heat; I'm waking after a couple of hours every night with springs poking into my shoulder blades & hips - ouch! I can "escape" to DD1's room as she lives elsewhere now but it's disruptive. I don't know how OH is tolerating it & can only think that after years of shift work, he's forgotten what a good night's rest feels like! Lesson learnt; if it looks too good to be true (£90 for an originally £900 still-in-original-wrapping mattress) it probably is too good to be true…

Anyway, much research done & a new mattress duly ordered, at mildly vast expense, so I need to keep a fairly tight rein on groceries & other household expenditure until I've recouped our investment. And I'm deeply unimpressed with bedding shops that don't let you lie on their wares, but want you to lie on an airbed & get scanned so the computer can recommend the ideal mattress for you - I can just guess what that would have cost!