As a stay-at-home wife and mother of more than a decade, I feel just a tad qualified to write on the subject of grocery shopping, menu planning and making meals for my family. Yet, I still don’t have it all figured out, and depending on the season, I feel as though I am a complete novice in this area.
While most of our meals are made from scratch for cost effectiveness, I often chose to make fully homemade meals to eliminate added, unnecessary ingredients like preservatives and extra sugars. We tend not to buy a lot of prepackaged meals or individually wrapped snacks. We don’t purchase many drink options beyond coffee, milk or orange juice. (On occasion, and especially over the holiday months I did buy plenty of organic apple juice from Aldi to make Wassail, or Crock Pot Apple Cider!!)
Also, since moving to the country, I just don’t have the luxury of great grocery stores right down the street. This means I must plan ahead, buy all the necessary ingredients for each of the planned meals, and– the big whammy– stay within a budget. Because we live almost an hour from the stores I prefer to shop at, I try not to go more than twice a month. (Of course, we have smaller markets in our town and the next town over that are sufficient if we really need something.)
Where to Shop
I often get asked where I prefer to shop as we really are limited to good quality stores in rural Oklahoma. I have tried almost all of the stores in close proximity, but have been completely happy with any of them for a variety of reasons. For the most part, the closest stores to us do carry the basics so when we are out of something or need that one thing, I am able to grab it locally. Yet, to find a store that has almost everything we need for two weeks (or even month!!) while staying affordable and that has good quality food items, has been quite a tall order.
Even after going on a hunt of most of the grocery stores within an hour of us, and even finding one that is fabulous, I still resorted to my old favorites. When we used to live in the city, I went to these three stores simply because they were right next to each other!! They also had all that we needed amongst the three stores, and were in a good part of town. So, where did I use to shop? Sprouts, Sam’s and Aldi (too bad Aldi doesn’t start with “s.”)
Now, I head into the city and shop at Aldi and Sam’s. Sprouts has temporarily been replaced by Azure Standard, as I find their prices to be a bit lower, but quality is comparable. The benefit to buying from Azure is that my order comes to a location about 6 miles from my house, and there is no worry of impulse buying. I really have to plan in advance what we will need, and it must last until the next time I order. (Azure works on a monthly system, but I often only need to buy from them every 2-3 months.)
How Often to Shop
I have played around with a variety of time frames in between shopping trips. At one point, I always went weekly, as we had ample time in our schedule and a limited pantry space. For the bulk of my years shopping, I have gone every other week, or two times per month. This seemed to work the best for our planning and schedule. Our last house had a massive pantry, so I had the ability to buy bulk items as they were on sale.
Our current home does not have any pantry space in the kitchen, so we added shelving and plenty of storage in the garage, just off the kitchen. If we didn’t add this extra space, I probably would have been able to shop once every few days or would have had to find a really creative way to store food around the pots and pans!
For a few months, while Nathan was traveling out of the country, I even switched to buying groceries just once a month. This was predominantly because, acting as a single parent, I simply didn’t have time for more than that. It worked well during that season but doesn’t seem to be going as smoothly these past few months. With holidays, parties, and 4 people eating (two of which are eating a ton lately!!) our food was running out quickly, and the kids were very bored of oatmeal (which I buy in bulk from Azure Standard!)
The DO’s of Grocery Shopping
Of course, I am just giving you some tips that I’ve learned over the years and not all of this will apply to everyone. I have found things that really work well for our family to eat healthy meals on a budget.
- Make a Menu Plan: This seems like a no-brainer in my planner, type A style brain, but it doesn’t always happen. When I don’t make a menu plan for the days that I am shopping for, I end up buying too much food that ends up going to waste. Food waste is not a budget friendly option.
- Make a Grocery List: After making a menu plan, then I create a grocery list based on each meal. I write down everything needed for the meals, with the exception of the things I know I have in bulk. (Think oil, salt, pepper, beef, etc..) Then, I go through my fridges, freezers and pantry storage to see if anything else can be crossed off the list. (I know… we have multiples of each of those cold storage items and I just mentioned food waste in #1… 🤦♀️ )
- Make a Store List: Once I have my grocery list for the meals planned over the next two weeks (or timeline between trips,) I will rewrite my lists into which store I plan to purchase the items from. In the case of Aldi, I even organize my list in order around the store (Who else has the floor plan of Aldi memorized? It’s so simple!)
- Plan Pick-Up: For both Azure Standard and Sam’s club, I simply order my food items on the app and wait for the correct pick-up time. Sam’s has made this process SO simple, and I am always singing its praises when I can. For a busy mom, who lives almost an hour away, club pick-up is genius! I’d even pay extra for it, but we do have the membership that includes it for free! (Ok, technically I am paying for it… lol!)
- Be Prepared for Storage: Because we live so far from Sam’s, I often bring a cooler with me for transporting cold items home. When I arrive home, the kids (&hubby if he’s home) help carry in all groceries to the island counter. I quickly begin putting away cold things, and then know I can take my time with the shelf stable items. For these items, I will rearrange storage spaces, making sure the new goes to the back and the older item moves forward. I try to arrange items in a neat(ish) order on the shelves in our garage pantry area, often cleaning or reorganizing as I go. (P.S. in case you think my spaces are perfectly organized.. they aren’t! Sometimes, I just quickly put things away without tidying as I go!) I do try to reduce packaging if possible and throw excess boxes of bags away.
The DONT’s of Grocery Shopping
- Don’t Go Hungry: This may be a no-brainer for almost everyone, and yet we still end up at the store HUNGRY!! This always means you will buy extra food that is probably unnecessary. Because I try to sneak out early in the morning, before anyone wakes up, I am often guilty of not eating breakfast before buying groceries.
- Don’t Take Buddies: Kids, hubbies, others who are not focused and on task can often be a distraction and/or budget busters! I love going grocery shopping alone, however this doesn’t always happen. If the kids need to go with me, I make sure!!!! to follow step #1 (see above!) and try to stay firm on expectations. (Stay near, don’t wander off, don’t ask me for a bunch of things, etc… They are much better now that they are not toddlers!)
- Don’t Lump Groceries and Toiletries Together: Our food budget should never be spent on shampoo!! Years ago, we recreated our budgeting system to include separate envelopes (aka allotted amounts of money) to accommodate these extra purchases that often happen on grocery trips. Once I was able to spend all of our food budget on just food, the money seemed to stretch appropriately!
Latest Grocery Haul Video: Click HERE or Watch BELOW
An Older Grocery Haul Video: Click HERE or Watch BELOW
A Video on GAPS Diet Meal Ideas: Click HERE or Watch BELOW
