Food Shopping & Grocery inspiration to reduce costs

With one month of the New Year down one of my goals was to try and reduce our grocery spending.  In October I stopped drinking Diet Coke altogether so I know I'm already saving money there.  I only bought the boxes of cans of Diet Coke when they were half price however I always had Diet Coke in the house.  I haven't had a Diet Coke for 4 months which has been great.

I thought I would post a few inspiration articles to help with the grocery budgets.  My goal this year is to shop at Aldi first then Woollies second.  Our shops whilst in the same shopping centre are not close together so I get lazy and when I get to Woollies I just finish my shop.  I know Aldi is so much cheaper for cheese, butter, yoghurt, english muffins, wraps, fruit toast, tinned food, rice, pasta etc. so I just need to face facts that I have to go from one shop and then to the other to get the rest.  Lots of Aldi fruit and veggies are packed for families ie a whole bag of potatoes so I might want to by 3-4 potatoes rather than a whole bag so I find that some of the fruit and veg options at Aldi don't work for my family.  That being said, I'm determined to cut my grocery budget without compromising family meals or snacks.  I need to do more school lunch box baking this year as I just got out of the habit sometimes.  Here's a few links to give you some ideas and inspiration to reduce costs.

Wendy from My Abundant Life has been on A Current Affair and has lots of helpful tips on how to live a wonderful life on a budget.  I still don't know how on earth she keeps her grocery budget for one month for her family of 4 to $180 as most people would spend more than that in a week.  I need to get a coffee and read through more of her blog again.  I now with her shampoos and hand soaps etc. she dilutes them so gets twice as much out of them and stock piles when things are on special.  Check out her blog for inspiration.  

Celia Mason from Fig Jam and Lime Cordial blog has lots of way to reduce household waste and this article is worth a read.  Also she is the Queen of Sourdough bread and has just updated her recipe and instructions with pictures.

Melissa has a post about surviving on $130 per week for groceries.

Here's some budget tips for $42 per week and naturally this does not include meat however you can still pick up some worth while tips.  Here is an article about the same family and how they are now ahead.

I found this family on Instagram last week very inspiring growing veggies for their family of 6.  

Australian Jody Allen has her weekly shopping list down to $50 and has written a book.  She cooks in bulk to have meals on hand. 

Another Aussie Mother & Daughter book called "Feed your Family for $75 a Week" by Cynthia & Alisa Mayne.

One other thing I am doing again is getting out the cold hard cash for 4 weeks of food shopping and putting it into separate zip lock bags with the date of the Monday on a little card inside.  This way I can see how much money is spent and left vs eftpos at the supermarket.  Cash is such a reminder of how much you have to spend.  If you have never done this take the money out weekly or monthly and it will change the way you spend.

Hopefully you and I can get some inspiration from some of these posts.  No one way is correct however any tip to help reduce the household family grocery budget is worth a read.

Around here

We've had a lovely couple of weeks with my sister and her husband visiting from Perth so lots of coffees and a few lunches at the club and a $35 win on Keno for me which was exciting.  One of my sisters won $650 and $198 so had more luck than me.  We usually spend $20 or so playing 1 cent machine to make it last longer.  My win paid for lunch and a bit of fun so I was more than happy with that.  Here's a few pics.

Enjoying lunch at The Dayboro Bakery with Mum and my 3 sisters and my kids.

First family pic of 2018 which I love.

3 of the 4 sisters with the middle one being my sister from Perth.  This photo was taken by Sienna.

Sienna is old enough to be covering her own school books this year and loved decorating them.

After it had cooled down a little bit we went for a late afternoon bike ride to the park.

Here's a few links you might be interested in.

Want to learn how to make the perfect scramble eggs which I read about here.

A post from back in 2013 with Sienna at age 8 helping make our very first Home Made Vanilla extract.

As it's the start of the year you might be interested in the little app called 1 Second Everyday.  I discovered this app a couple of years ago but I didn't have enough storage on my phone so I haven't done one.  I'm going to attempt to do it again this year.  Watch this 6 min video for inspiration.

A blogger I follow has done it for the past 2 years and shares her tips on using the app 1 Second Everyday.  The video for the 365 days ends up as a 6 minute video of the year.  I've seen a few and they are amazing.  This was her first video in 2016 and her second video in 2017.  If you miss a day you can just use footage from another day and once they videos are loaded into the app I believe you can then delete them from your phone if you are low on storage.