To think it's too much?

[Ellatreetop]

We spend £400 on our weekly shop, granted we have a family of seven, shop at Ocado and try to stick to organic fruit/veg/meat but still it seems ridiculous!

How many people in your family, where do you shop and how much do you spend?!

I got to local butchers spend around £40 then fruit and veg shop spend around £25
Get bread milk squash treats ect from super market around £30
2 adults 2 teen boys 15 & 16

I got to b&m for toiletries & cleaning products and spend around £15

I don't buy cleaning stuff every week. Tbh I don't buy much cleaning stuff as I use hot water and soap or vinegar for most things.

Sanitary protection I have a mooncup and washable pads.

Coffee and tea are once every 3 months buy a £5 box of tea bags on offer and a £3 tin of coffee.

Toilet rolls again once every couple of months buy 18 for a fiver from the local shop.

We only drink water in our house too. I have a coffee every day but as I'm the only adult a jar of coffee lasts forever.

I don't want DS to get into the habit of drinking squash/fizzy/juice when plain water is much better for you.

We're another only water or milk house. Much to the frustration of my sister who I've had to buy a bottle of squash for!

Stop shopping with Ocado

@ILikeyourHairyHands that’s good for you, believe it or not my fridge is always full and so is my larder (and organised too) - when I built my house I specifically built a walk in larder so I could organise everything properly, I have lentils, chickpeas, pasta, rice, cous cous etc all in jars that seem to last me and then I just constantly top up. I have herbs and spices at the ready, I cook everything from scratch.
We will be getting chickens soon as my dh has finished adapting and building on to a shed for them so we will have our own fresh eggs. I like the way I do things, it has enabled me to design and build a very efficient and ergonomic house for family. I don’t meal plan my breakfasts and lunches, my dc get a packed lunch going to school every day (no school meals over here) and to be honest breakfast is not something I can plan as they sometimes want different things in the morning ( it’s the only time I do different things) so one might have cereal and fruit, the other may opt for French toast. I do buy bread every so often... see receipt 1 and I split it and freeze it for French toast. I sometimes buy frozen croissants and pop them in the freezer too.
Ppl live in different ways...clearly we can see we live very differently

People seriously clean their house with vinegar? it must stink!

try to stick to organic fruit/veg/meat

Its a bit late to think about the planet now- with that many children

Yes white vinegar diluted with water will smell for a few minutes but with windows open while you clean nothing remains. Rather that than breathe in chemicals that are perfumed.

No, I'd rather breathe in my method spray thanks! Vinegar smells disgusting- even white vinegar!

I’ll be doing my fridge and larder stock take in a bit and then shopping today or tomorrow with a dinner meal plan- I can post my receipt although I’m sure some of you are not interested but it can be done for less than 100 for sure!!

We spend roughly £150 a week for two adults and a toddler and I totally see where you're coming from. I don't think we could eat well on much less. I guess everyone's idea of what eating well is quite different so there isn't much point comparing.

So there it is my “stock take”, shopping list and meal plan for 7 days worth of meals. Tomorrow we are at a relatives for a roast dinner...I will make a dessert tonight.

And the pot of chopped veg is all of my little bits of leftover veg that I can’t use for a meal- so I will make a soup for today with that. Any leftover I will use for lunches.

ILikeyourHairyHands

While the volume might not be excessive, you can't deny that there's a lot of luxury priced products in that shop. Sixteen pound chickens, crab, £12 bottles of wine, several No 1 products which are very expensive.

That's very far from a normal shop that people on average budgets buy every week. As a PP says, it looks like what you might spend if you were pushing the boat out at Christmas.

We get Catsan litter too but we get it from Costco and you can get a big bag for under a tenner, so quite a saving if you're buying a small bag for £6.

Actually OP I came on about to say that we only spend £100 a week on groceries but then I remembered to add in the co-op runs, the pet food ordered from elsewhere, the mammoth order of washing tablets etc that I do once a month, toiletries and the snacks and lunches DH buys when I don't have time to make him lunch and he pops to Tesco. Add to that a newborn with all the costs they entail (she's partially formula fed and has a real habit of pooping and weeing as soon as I change her nappy so we go through quite a few nappies at each change!) so I think we probably spend closer to £200 a week truthfully - and that's for a family of four - although DSS (11) is only here half the time and gets school lunches (not included). You could probably reduce your bill but I found that once I started paying attention to animal welfare the bill soared. So much that we are having a meat free day once a week now to reduce both our consumption and the weekly food bill!
If we were big drinkers the bill would be higher still.

*Oliver's, I'm not asking how to make savings.

The magazine is free with the Waitrose card*

But you don’t have a Waitrose card.
I can’t see where it was taken off

I was looking at it as the difference between those that do a shop for much less and those that spend a lot more.

For us we have 3 vegans and without Dp (meat eater) probably could do a weeks shopping for around £10-£15

We buy a lot of pasta, potatoes, rice, frozen veg and dried soya mince and tins of tomatoes

We eat the odd apple, orange or banana. No puddings

None of us eat breakfast and both Ds and Dd when working usually get fed at work.

The cats get Sainsbury’s own pack of 6 and the £1.55 Lidl cat litter.

I have had the more expensive stuff but it doesn’t act any differently than the cheap stuff.

We buy a bag of dried food that lasts a while for when we need to cajole the into a room or their carrying cases or as a treat.

They probably cost us £7-£8 per week

I wouldn’t consider a magazine as part of my weekly grocery budget anyway to be honest, that’s personal or miscellaneous spending. Weekly shopping to me is food and household products.

£100 a week for 2 adults, thats lunches, 5-6 dinners, snacks and toiletries.... we eat well with good meat etc.

So armed with my stock take, dinner meal plan and my list I did my shopping and this is what it came out as...7 meals including catering for lunches!! €54.84... and I always aim for €65 per week.

And I actually still need courgette and cauliflower (aldi didn’t have any for some reason) but that will still bring me under 60!!

And how many are you feeding Lipper?

@freakstar 4...2 adults and 2 children aged 4 and 6... I always have leftovers so I could probably feed another adult and child (but we use leftovers for myself and dh’s lunch the next day.

Just did my shop. £45 for the 2 of us. Includes my lunches for work but DS is still on free school meals. No doubt I will be spending more when he starts having a packed lunch.

This is to last us until next Friday then I will do another shop.

This week's dinners - roast chicken, salmon with herb potatoes, lasagne (I make a family size one so that will feed us for 2 nights), chicken casserole.

I think my spending is average really. I don't scrimp on food as I have had to do that in the past and I do not want us to be hungry. But equally I don't buy organic meat, expensive seafood and fancy wine because I don't eat things like that. I buy things like supermarket brand porridge oats as they don't taste any different to me than more expensive ones, and with things like coffee and washing powder I buy whatever is on offer.

Me, two children who eat near enough adult portions, and BF about half the week.

Ocado anywhere between £60 and £100 depending on if I'm stocking up on cat food/litter etc - average £80 I guess. Maybe £10 top up of fruit etc from Aldi.

Laundry and dishwasher tabs from Smol so about £8 a month on those. Loo roll from WGAC £40 ish every 6 months.

We don't eat organic and I'm happy to use Ocado own brand stuff or Waitrose essentials (Ocado chopped tomatoes are really good!) and I do a mix of scratch cooking and the odd ready meal/oven pizza. I take my own lunches to work/eat lunch at home but kids have school dinners. We do eat a lot of veg and fruit and I do buy ready prepped stuff a lot, but I'm disabled and literally cannot stand up to chop shit, especially if I've been in work all day. So I guess it would be cheaper if I bought whole onions!