Getting Ready for Grocery Shopping

I'm due to do my monthly grocery shopping in a fortnight. If you remember, I split the January monthly shop between October, November and December shops last year so I wouldn't have to bother with the supermarket or butcher this month.

This week I've started to put my February list together, using old shopping lists. Because Aldi have taken down their online shopping list (why?) I've had to go back to pen and paper, the way I used to write it up before I became the computer savvy super shopper that I am (and that is totally tongue in cheek - there is nothing computer savvy about me!).

What I've discovered though is that we don't need a lot thanks to our grocery stockpile. There is still plenty of meat, chicken and fish in the freezer. In fact it is still almost full and we have been steadily eating from it since December when I did my last big meat shop. The pantry is still looking full. The fridge is full. The garden is producing more than enough salad veggies and herbs to keep us going and we have oranges and rhubarb for fruit. Ok, that's not a huge variety for fruit but there are tins of fruit salad, peaches, apricots and plums in the pantry and stewed apples, rhubarb and plums in the freezer.

My almost full freezer. I keep frozen veg in a green bag, easy to identify and to lift in and out of the freezer. I use coloured bags for freezer storage to make storing, sorting and finding what I want easy.

There is MOO cordial in the freezer if we want something different to drink and thanks to an NQR special a while ago there are tea bags enough to last another few months. I may need to get coffee but if Wayne and I cut back to just one cup each in the mornings we'll have enough to last until the end of February.

We will need cheese, butter and eggs and of course fresh milk each week but that's about it. The meal plan for February is already done and I don't need to buy anything special for it.

Use the cardboard cartons from the supermarket shelves to act as dividers and shelving in your pantry instead of buying expensive organizers. When they start to get ratty, just pick up a new one from the supermarket.

And all that has led to me making a wildly radical (again, tongue in cheek) decision. Because February is No Spending month I'm going to try and get to the first Friday in March, which will be the 6th, with what food we have in the house  and garden. I am pretty sure we can make it easily and I am pretty sure I am the only one who will notice I haven't done any grocery shopping.

My revised grocery budget for February is $60, leaving $260 to put into the slush fund - a nice amount to add to the money for the quarterly meat shop (I have talked about why in the Member's forum).