Frugal February Part 1
Ahhh, frugal February. Here we are, the month of getting myself together and working on new goals. Some may ask why not start in January?? Why do you wait? Well for me, January still feels like a holiday and with school holidays going till near on February, I feel like, if we are living our best life for an extra 4 weeks, then so be it. No harm done. But come February, it is time to reduce those 4 blocks of chocolate down to maybe 1 in the shopping. Or reduce some of the waste on our fresh produce. I want to say there are some products I will not be frugal with, as they are product we love and work for us. To me, being frugal is not about slashing a tonne from our budget. It is about making use of the things we already have and reduce our waste and just having what we need and let me tell you my waistline does not be needing those 4 blocks of chocolate a week, lol.
So where do I start, you ask. Well, I look back on our weekly food bills and then work out on average what we spend and set myself a number. So for this month my food budget will be $180 a week. My goal is to only spend $150 from Thursday to Thursday with 1 night of takeaway. Now that comes out of a completely different sort of spending, we will not get into that today. Now I aim to only spend $150 out of the $180, so I can leave myself some extra room for those weeks where thing jump up in price. Now let me be clear, if we go over $150 or $180 that is super fine, nobody is losing their head or being sold on gumtree. Its does happens and that is super ok with us. Know that this might not work for everyone and that is also exceptionally fine. For me I feel like it is a challenge and really makes me focus and get super creative with my leftovers. And not having me visit the store 100 times a week.
A few things I do to help me make the most around the kitchen.
We have a first container. So those left over half vegetable or half onion, all live in this and we look there first for meal inspiration or what we can pair it with
Keeping the staples topped up like flour, sugar, yeast
Looking at the fruit that is on sale and taking the time to look at the per kg price
Making our own bread
Click and collect
These are only a few things that work for us as a family but may be helpful to others so I thought I would share. I am a sucker for a special or an “oops how did that get in there” shopper when I head to the grocery store so online click and collect is hands down my saving grace. Let me disclose I am not oops buying a tone of junk, but I find myself going “oh, I’ll have time to use that and make granny’s 30-year-old lamb casserole recipe” and months go buy and that product sits in my pantry with not even a thought. I may look like I have tone of time but boy do my days fly by #mumlife, lol.
So, this week’s super creation we had lamb roast one night and we had fair bit of lamb left over so 2 nights later I turned this into a beautiful vegetable filled lamb shepherd’s pie I will include a step-by-step collage of what I used and did below. It was delightful. I am currently roasting some leftover pumpkin from this week and going to make that in to some pumpkin and feta scrolls for the week and school lunches.
I have done our groceries for the week and we are currently sitting at $77 Left over from the $150 so I will be sure to be honest and true about if we can stay under or if we go over it, exciting to see how we will go, lol.
Next week I am going to talk about how I am currently doing a pantry stocktake and where I have been doing some grocery shopping and a few interesting finds.
Happy being frugal loves and if you have any frugal tips, I would love to hear them
Xo Tieana
