What I Learned When I Didn't Go "Monthly Shopping"
I am usually the person blogging about how I go grocery shopping on a monthly basis and plan my meals. You can read about some of it here in this post.
There was never a giant "Dear Diary" post I wrote on the date I started monthly grocery shopping but if I had to guesstimate it would be about two years ago...I think.
Anyway, this past month things got crazy! and we just couldn't make it work into our schedule to get away to our normal haunts and get it done. So we decided to skip it this month.
Dumbest idea ever!
In an effort to try to go grocery shopping semi-smartly I started the month with a big (for us) trip to Costco.
I left with enough rice to feed Cambodia and the feeling that I had already spent half of my grocery budget for the month. It was the second of March and my husband doesn't even like rice. Win.
On the plus side (because I am always trying to find that so-called silver lining of an overall sucky situation) I did manage to come up with some things I have learned by shopping on a weekly rather than monthly basis. Here are some of them:
-When you shop on a weekly basis you really only have a small frame of time you are planning for. While it does seem to make it easier when you've have only 7 meal slots scratched out on your church bulletin it makes it a little more daunting because practically everything for those meals has to be purchased because you don't have anything waiting in the wings to use for dinner.
-I eat horribly when I shop weekly. Because March 20th I have the mental reminder that there are still 10 days left in the month and I only have $15.62 left to spend on groceries. So when it comes to feeding my family am I going to spend the $4.99 on the long grain organic rice at Whole Foods or am I going to go to Aldi and spend $.67 on a rice pack full of flavors and yellow dye 5? It stinks but I'm pretty sure you know the answer of what I'm going to say I chose. Shopping in bulk at the beginning of the month means that I may have bought the rice at the beginning of the month but I knew I had to make my rice supply last for the month so I'm planning my meals to make it last.
-By not meal planning and shopping ahead I feel really behind in my game. This past weekend was our resale. It consumed my mind for the entire week leading up to it and when it was over I came home to a house of hungry family and virtually no food to make. So Taco Bell was had, we all agreed we felt like crap, and spent the remainder of our grocery budget we had on one meal. If I had gone monthly grocery shopping I would have at least had something in the freezer or pantry that I could have made or Nick could have gotten out and planned on having.
The lesson our family has decided is the best is that from now on we are going grocery shopping and doing on our meal planning on a monthly basis from now on. With homeschool and running around these two wonderful children, it just makes more sense for our family. I guess the price of going over budget this month was worth it to learn the invaluability of monthly shopping for us.