Tips on how to manage shopping,cooking etc on a large group holiday please!

[KM1]

Can anyone give me some tips on how you have managed shopping, cooking and the like on a group holiday? We are going to a large villa in Spain for 2 weeks in the summer with my family. There will be ourselves, my parents, my two brothers and two sisters plus dps and dcs. That makes 18 of us all together (although youngest ds and her dh will only be there for few days). Never having been on a group holiday before, I can't begin to think how we work out shopping, cooking and who pays for what for so many people! All tips will be gratefully received! Thanks.

Best way we have found is for each person (or couple/family) to be allocated a day, when they buy and cook for all meals. Another couple/family are allocated that day for washing up/cleaning duties.

Alcohol/snacks/washing up stuff etc paid for by a kitty which everyone contributes.

If you have a lot of people then one family does breakfast and lunch and hte other family does dinner.

Have a kitty and work out how much each family should put in before you go. Take turns cooking, cleaning etc.

OK....

one of my friends house sits for a very famouse author who has a huge house...

when she house sits our whole group of friends goes round... (we typiacally ALWAYS have easter weekend there + a few weekends / dates throughout the year)

5 couples = 10 adults

the deal is...

My (very organised) friend says the meals we will be having are:

day 1 breakfast: arrive after
day 1 lunch: soup and bread
Day 1 dinner: lasagne

Day 2 breakfast... full english
out all day
Day 2 dinner casserole

Day 3 breakfast: cereal / toast / jam etc
Day 3 lunch: sunday roast
Day 3 tea: omlette

Day 4 breakfast cereal and toast etc
Day 4 lunch: make pizza

Go homes

Etc or something like that.

Each couple volunteers to 'do' a dinner (in bold) so we all cook a meal for everyone once. We take turns to clear up and do other 'hosuehold' stuff. *as we are livng in someone elses house )

My friend does a big online waitrose shop for all ingrediants necessary for the meals, and fruit etc and juice.
We split this bill equally.

We also all bring a long a few snacks from our cupboards.... crisps / chocolate / cake /nuts etc and these go on a tray. We also all bring / make a pudding for our 'meal'.

Its all very flexible, we work it amoungst ourselves... we know what we are having basically (and we often do similar menu plans of an full breakfast on saturday with a day out and a sunday roast in sunday)

We also regularly go camping together and again split the supermarket bill for basic bits, and then we often have a pub lunch etc where we all pay for ourselves!

Message withdrawn

Since you cannot take enough food with you and will be doing local shopping I would defineatly suggest a kitty.

Make it as fair as poss [er family. Eg £15 per adult per day, £8 - £10 per child) Then you can mulily that by days/people so those who are only there a few days pay £X and those with kids who are there for 2 weeks pay £Y

This will give wnough shopping budgets. Then I would suggest (bear in mind you are in spain and it is hot, so not full english needed!) Breakfast is a cater and grab for you and your nearest. EG make sure there is cereal, milk, bread, tea, coffee, juice, yoghurt and then each small family is responsible for them and their kids.

Lunch I would assume is usually out, or again simple, salads etc. In the evening have a rppta for which family is ON. 18 is a lot to cope with, so I would suggest 2 couples (eg 4 people) cater and tidy each night. Also plan a menu, as best as possible before.

It all sounds a pain, but have a plan, then everyone knows in advance, and no-one gets stiuck with cooking/cleaning all the time.

Ask around who likes what foods, and check the majority do. eg do spag bol one night, roast chicken another etc. Keep it simple, plan loads of evenings out!!

Thanks for all the ideas! Crunchie I think you are right that breakfast and lunch will have to be everyone sort out their own family as we will all be getting up at different times (my dcs will be 11 and 7 whereas my ds will have a 1yr old and a 6 week old!) and also we are all hiring our own cars so that we can go out on our own or in groups as we choose. But I think a rota for dinner is a very good idea. There is a very large barbecue so we might use that a lot!

I wish we could do an internet shop but I don't think Tesco deliver to the South of Spain yet!

I think it will have to be a kitty worked out on a child price and an adult price so that is fair. We'll have to have a big family meeting before we go to sort it all out! Thanks for all your help!

Thanks for all the ideas! Crunchie I think you are right that breakfast and lunch will have to be everyone sort out their own family as we will all be getting up at different times (my dcs will be 11 and 7 whereas my ds will have a 1yr old and a 6 week old!) and also we are all hiring our own cars so that we can go out on our own or in groups as we choose. But I think a rota for dinner is a very good idea. There is a very large barbecue so we might use that a lot!

I wish we could do an internet shop but I don't think Tesco deliver to the South of Spain yet!

I think it will have to be a kitty worked out on a child price and an adult price so that is fair. We'll have to have a big family meeting before we go to sort it all out! Thanks for all your help!

with a big BBQ I would plan that plus breads, salads, jkt potatoes for 1.2 the evenings! Added to that some simple pasta (always fave with kids) you can also plan to do pizza, fish finger type things for the younger ones as a high tea type things if the adults want to eat later

Don't be too sorry about Tesco, they might be a red herring in this country too - we did a group holiday in 2005 where we used them, similar group last year couldn't use them because the cottage was a 'business address', grr. However that meant we had to try a different tack, which could work overseas. We all figured out by email what we would cook for evening meals, so we didn't end up with two of the same thing, and shopped individually for those meals. We told one person as we bought food and drinks what we'd spent, and shortly after the holiday that person delivered a 'bill'. This was everything that had been spent, divided out fairly (twice as much for couples as for singles, a small contribution for children as they didn't eat dinner with us), and then taken off each person or couple's bill was whatever they'd spent themselves. So if you'd cooked with someone but not bought the ingredients you might end up owing a fair bit, while if you'd done a big shop for an entire dinner plus some other bits, everyone else might actually owe you some money.

It seemed to work, it helps if no one takes the piss (eg goes out and buys loads of lunch and breakfast food for their own family and claims it back from the group), none of the adults are teetotal, and you have at least one geek who's brought a laptop with Excel on it.

A couple of the adults are teetotal! We have already thought of this though, and will have to have a kitty for food and a kitty for drink so that those who don't drink won't have to put into this!