A change to the way I do the groceries....

One thing I hate doing is the grocery shopping.... it comes from when I lived at home with my Nana - I used to have to take her to every supermarket, and sometimes the butcher as well so she could get all the specials EVERY WEEK. It actually took a WHOLE day to do the groceries - that was the last thing I wanted to do in my teenage years!

Fast forward a few years and I still hate it! I hate walking through all the isles and then standing in the line at the checkout, then packing all the groceries, loading the car, and then coming back home to unpack it all again. I tried the countdown online shopping for a while and that was great, except I couldn't always find the things I wanted, and it was harder to buy things in bulk.

So back to Pak n Save I went - I was on maternity leave so had some time to go shopping during the day. I still hated it.

Then the time for me to go back to work fast approached... I wasn't sure how to juggle work full time, 2 kids, and have to go to the supermarket! The whole concept of knowing that I've worked all day, come home and sorted out dinner and the kids, got everything ready for the next day, and THEN have to go to the supermarket gave me heart palpitations just at the thought of it!

Then I thought that we should try doing a fortnightly shop - If it means I only have to go to the supermarket once in two weeks - I'm all for it! So that is what we did. We are at the end of our first fortnightly shop this Wednesday... I'm quite surprised at how much we have left in the fridge!

Not bad huh??

Excuse all the medicine bottles... I've had sick kids :-(

I think it's one of the best decisions I've ever made in my whole entire life! 

I've learnt: 

- to buy only what we will need for those two weeks, so that I don't get mad at having to throw away food that went yucky because it wasn't eaten. 

- to use everything that we have

- to make everything last - once it's gone, that's it - no more until next shopping day unless it's milk

- how to use my brain and think of more ideas to use what we have

- how to be a better meal planner

- to make sure I use what we already have in our food storage first, and to restock it with new stuff so that food is getting rotated properly

Hopefully I will learn:

- how to be a little more creative with our meals

- HOW TO STICK TO MY FOOD BUDGET! 

I hope this continues to work for us.

Wonder what it would be like to do a monthly shop?? I wonder if I could handle that??