Aibu to be annoyed the food shop disappears so quickly

[toadstool32]

It drives me insane. Food shop arrives and within a day most cupboard snacks / fruit has been eaten. I’ve spoken to everyone on numerous occasions about making things last. Family of 5 plus a dog, spending anywhere between £100-£130 a week. How do you make things last?! (Obviously not fresh stuff with dates but the constant snacking).

edited to add: school lunches and snacks are all provided by school. I get lunch at work too. So this is just home food.

£100-130 sounds pretty good for a family of 5 to be honest!

Snack wise is the issue that people are over-eating, or that you’re not buying enough? Just thinking with a family of 5 if all you bought was for example a 6 pack of crisps or pack of Twirls then actually they probably will be gone after 1 day even if everyone only has 1.

£100-130 PW? I used to spend that for just me, a cat and a dog and and dp! I'd expect to spend a lot more for a family of five! You could shop at Lidl or Aldi, which might help a bit. And home cook, batch cook, no ready-made shop prepared meals?

That’s a very very efficient budget for so many, I would assume that’s part of the problem, there just isn’t much.

But £600 a month effectively when lunches are covered for 4/5 of us is loads in my opinion.

Gosh, our shopping bill is around the same and yet there's only me, DH and our adult son and two dogs.

None of us are particularly big snackers really.

How old are the children?

Not anymore, not with price rises. I spend more than that for a family of four and then add on all the top up shops in between - food is more expensive than if used to be and it's going up all the time.

Honestly I wouldn’t say it is. Are you actually buying enough snacks to last a week? What are you actually buying snack wise?

Because if you’re buying enough e.g. 20 pack crisps, biscuits, a few punnets of fruit etc and the issue is overeating then you could start doing snack boxes to limit.

If the issue is that actually you’re not buying anywhere near enough then the answer is to buy more.

I spend around £500 a month for all our food - there’s 2 of us.
When we had the DDs at home, I would buy snacks but the DDs knew once they were gone that was it for the week. So if they ate all the biscuits by Monday there would be no more til Saturday.

I shop at Morrisons, Tesco, Asda or Sainsbury’s - whichever has the biggest cash back incentive at the time through my banking app

It sounds like you're not buying anywhere near enough food.

We spend similar for a family of 4

Do you limit snacks or are they free reign? If limited is there definitely enough to last all week including adults having some? (i always end up in the kids snacks!)

If you don't currently put a limit on number of snacks per day then maybe start doing that, or give each child their own box of snacks that's gone when it's gone so they learn how to make it last without the fomo that comes from a shared snack cupboard!

Is it being shared properly or is the issue one or two eating it all before others get the chance?

We have snack boxes so things are shared out and folks can eat their share at whatever pace they want without impacting others.

My DH and kids prefer snacking and grazing to large meals. I can’t change it - that’s the way they are, they just like eating little and often. And they get hungry! It’s not worth an argument, I just have to get plenty in and leave them to it. Accept what you cannot change.

OP I felt the same way about six months ago and had to massively revise my expectations for the budget. When I upped it by approx £25-30 a week, it made a huge difference.
Cost of living rises …. 😢

Snacks I’ve bought this week : 2 punnets of grapes, 2 x strawberries, 6 bananas, 2 x four milky ways, triple pack of biscuits, 2 x packs of rice cakes, 2 x packs of mini marylands, yoghurts, specific snacks for the toddler.

Aldi or Lidl can be far cheaper, and may well negate any cash back deals you might have. There’s certain things we get from either of those 2 places that work out far cheaper than the others you’ve listed.
Crisps
Biscuits
Fruit
salad
cheese
bread
and so on.

I think I’ll start snack boxes.

I wonder if, because it was going to quickly, each family member grabbed a few things to save 'for later' to make sure they actually got some - thus exacerbating the problem! In which case, you could try separating stuff into boxes, so everyone gets an equal share, and if they eat it all within 2 days, tough luck.

Either that or if you can't beat them join them and make sure you grab one of everything and squirrel it away in your car/office/wherever before you even put it out for everyone else. Yes it's a bit grim to have to do that in a family setting but if you've already tried asking nicely and they can't self-regulate you're stuck.

If you can only afford/want to buy x amount of food, it's not necessarily an issue if some people would prefer feast/famine - e.g. having 2 snacky days and then nothing else for the rest of the week. It's not how I'd prefer to do it but everyone's different. The issue is if some people aren't getting anything because of others being greedy - and the greedy people (if old enough) are eating more than their fair share then once it's run out buying more out of their own money, so unhealthy too.

Honestly, that doesn't sound like a huge amount for five people.

So when they're gone, they're gone 🤷‍♂️

Or is it that they're not being shared evenly and some people are going without because they don't want to eat it within the first few days?

I spend around £750 per month for a family of 4 not including supplies for our cats. I think if you’re able to stick to a 100-130 budget that is very good.

Snackwise I only buy crisps & fresh fruit, and bake anything else like cake, flap jacks, biscuits, cookies etc and I don’t buy any other snacks at all. I usually double the recipes and put half in the freezer, lots of cakes and biscuit doughs freeze well and then they can’t all be eaten at once. It is also much cheaper than shop bought.

If you don’t fancy making snacks from scratch then I would divide up the snacks you buy into a small basket or something for each person and tell them that’s their snacks until x and they won’t get anymore once eaten.

I agree with pp that that is pretty impressive budgeting in this day and age. This inflation business is ridiculous.

op, 600 a month for 5 people is not much, and to be honest, you started the thread saying it was 400- 520 inc the dog, so it’s jumped way up when people pointed it out.

there are two of us and we spend over 600 a month, so you have a very frugal budget, and honestly if that list is for a week, it’s not much, that’s the issue,

2 punnets grapes
2 punnets strawberry's
6 bananas

For a family of five that's only about 5 portions of fruit a week, in a fruit enjoying family that's really only 1-2 days worth