Monthly Shoppers - your tips please!

[Gillian76]

I have been a weekly shopper for years and am wondering about trying an online monthly shop. Obviously with weekly top-ups for fresh fruit etc. We get milk delivered.

How do you do it?

Find it quite easy actually. I guess over time you build up an idea of the kind of things you use again and again.
I buy us a variety of meats/fish and freeze them all (aim for 3 or 4 times a week). I make sure another drawer of the freezer is also stocked up with frozen veg. Then I buy a couple of tubs of icecream and a couple of pizzas and sometimes a pie. Our freezer generally also has a loaf of bread in it and then it's crammed. On top of this there are certain staples which I get loads of (tinned tomatoes in particular - buy 40 for the month! - , also a variety of beans in cans, dried fruit and nuts). I also ensure the spices and stocks (beef, chicken, veg and fish) are replenished each month as are the sauces (mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup, soy, balsamic vinegar, hollandaise etc). I'll also buy about 10 boxes of various cereals and stock up on cleaning products and bath products (including nappies). Dh'll also be treated to 2 boxes of beer and I get a couple of bottles of wine for myself. Treats like biscuits, cakes, crisps get bought when we're craving them - to cut down on how many we eat basically.
My aim is to have enough basics to always be able to create a meal or sandwiches/something on toast from our supplies. We'll do a tiny shop every few days to top up for special dishes we want to cook that evening / the following evening (fresh veg usually from the market) and also for milk and bread and probably spend an extra £10-15.
The key is having somewhere to store that huge shop at the start of the month. We could put it on top of the cupboards, but as I'm pg I emptied a couple of shelves in a cupboard we have right next to the kitchen.
Have been doing this for 6 months and been quite successful (dh loves always having a meal in the house) but I have noticed that certain meals come around a little too often for me maybe, so I have started trying to plan a more varied menu for the month to vary the basics we stock up on slightly and give us a little more variety in the long run. Am a bit of a perfectionist so this is taking a while to do though - so many cookbooks to trawl through!

Thanks, yomellamoHelly. We do have quite a bit of room. Just need to clear out the freezer!

Am beginning to get my list together.

Any more tips?

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I have been doing online shopping since going back to work from SAHM four years ago. Just looking at my online orders I seem to average about three to four weeks and usually there are offers on at the big supermarkets which save you the price of the delivery charge anyway. I buy four six pinters of milk each week and my 'frig will keep milk fresh for about a fortnight so I freeze half. I usually buy fish/meat/cheese for about 14 days worth and manage to get another 10 days out of the leftovers by turning them into something else IYSWIM. So roast chicken becomes sandwiches and chicken curry, beef casserole becomes a pie, spag bol sauce becomes lasagne, and so on. Once you have done the shop a few times you do tend to get to know exactly what to order and we rarely run out of things, although living in London we are never more than five minutes from a corner shop! I also buy the value pizzas just for the bases and then add cheese and various leftovers on as toppings too. Loo rolls get divided around the downstairs loo and two bathrooms where they sit in a large basket that can hold the supplies. Lots of things like dried pasta, fajitas (they can be put in the freezer) rice, cous cous, and rissotto rice. Also buy 4 bottles freshly squeezed juice and lots of value orange juice in cartons and mix one carton of juice with one freshly squeezed bottle - and the taste is virtually the same IMO. Only trouble is you do sometimes end up with things that you keep reordering and dont use up. (like my current stock of anchovies now topping 24 tins)! Good luck I hope you find this helps.