Since we’ve started officially homeschooling, I’m finding that doing one big shopping trip per week has become more of a challenge to fit in. I’m trying to have a consistent daily schedule, but working in a once-a-week 2-hour shopping trip around naps and nursing and homeschooling is just not working for us.
So I’m considering breaking up my shopping into 2 or 3 one-store trips throughout the week. Depending upon how good the deals are each week, I’m thinking it might work something like: one night I’ll go out and do a quick trip to Dillons after the little ones are in bed, on Tuesdays I’ll take one of the girls to Aldi with me while my Mother’s Helper is here, and, if the deals are really great at Target or some other store, I’ll take all three little ones with me after afternoon nap time one day each week.
That’s just what I’m tentatively thinking might work right now. I know it flies in the face of my previous stance to only go shopping once a week, but I’m also a person who tries to keep an open mind and never say “never”. Different things work at different times and different seasons of life, right? And since we live where all the stores are so close to us right now, there aren’t really any added fuel costs to split things up.
We’ll see how it goes. I’m known to easily change my mind so if I try this for a few weeks and it’s worse than before, I’ll put my thinking cap on again and see what I come up with!
At any rate, I split up my shopping trip this week into two parts. I took all the children with me to Aldi on Monday and here’s what we bought:
And I did a quick shopping trip at Dillons on Tuesday night after the children were in bed:
I spent a little over $36 at Aldi and $5.44 at Dillons (see details on that trip here) bringing my total for groceries this week to right around $41.50. I had a little leftover money from a previous week that I was under-budget which I used to cover the extra $1.50 so we’re still within our $40/week grocery budget right now. I’ve actually surprised myself that this low budget is still cutting it for our family.
We’re still using meat from our freezer and meals from our After-The-Baby-Freezer-Stash so I know that helps. We’ve almost cleaned our freezer out, though, so I’m gearing up for re-stocking it soon. I’m considering trying Once-A-Month Cooking but I haven’t decided yet whether or not I’m going to take the plunge or if that’s feasible for our budget. I’ll keep you apprised.
We’re headed to Arkansas tomorrow for our annual week-long family vacation at the Bull Shoals Lake with all of my extended family so I won’t have to do too much cooking this coming week. We’re all sharing the cooking load, but I didn’t have to buy anything extra as I’m only bringing food I already had in my stockpile. The benefits of using coupons and buying ahead are practically endless, aren’t they?
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