About Me

My name is Jules and I am a wife, mum and nanna. I have recently taken early retirement from Special Education which was a job that i really loved. I am loving life and fully intend to make the most of it making some fantastic memories along the way. Family and friends are very important to me and I enjoy spending time with them. I love socialising and having a laugh.

Tuesday, 17 July 2018


Stretching the housekeeping


Afternoon everyone,
I'm experimenting, at the moment, with the cheapest way to shop for groceries. I cook everything from scratch and don't buy any processed or ready-made foods. This is personal choice as I love to cook using fresh ingredients. I've tried buying all my fruit and veg from the local farm shop but found that choice was limited on the fruit side and, also bizarrely, some of the fruit looked past it's best. This sort of defeated the object of buying from source to get better quality products. The veg was good quality though, and a little bit cheaper, but after weighing up the fuel to fetch it and the fact that I still had to buy fruit elsewhere I decided it wasn't working out. I tried two other farm shops but found the same problem here and they were quite a bit more expensive, plus even further to travel. I've wondered about having veg boxes delivered but never got round to trying that as of yet. We have red meat once a week and the rest of the meals are either chicken or vegetarian. I only buy chicken breasts as hubby and daughter don't like thighs, whole chicken or chicken on the bone. This works out expensive so I try to do a couple of meatless meals a week to keep costs down. We have two supermarkets in the next town, Tesco and Aldi. I like Aldi and find their products good value and good quality, the only problem is the middle aisles which hold some sort of magical attraction for hubby causing the shopping bill to rise with unnecessary purchases. Zero willpower!! We have Tesco here, too, which is slightly more expensive but does have some good offers. The problem with going to both supermarkets is that you tend to overspend. For the past month I've tried a different approach. When we get paid I go to Aldi and buy enough of the  non perishable items from there that we either prefer or are better value/quality, these include washing powder, toilet rolls, baby wipes. I then go to the discount store Home Bargains and again buy items for the month that I know are cheaper from here than Tesco, this is usually Lenor fabric softener, toilet cleaner, food bags, shower gel, teabags.  I don't go again till next payday.
Then I've taken out a delivery saver pass with Tesco for 6 months which is £3.49 a month and I have my fresh shopping and any offers that are worth getting delivered each week. At the moment, I would honestly say this seems to be working. The home delivery is very good and if there are any items not available they always substitute with an item of equal or higher value. Last week I had extra chicken breasts as the size ordered wasn't available so they sent two slightly smaller ones which equated to more for the same price. They often swap items for the Tesco finest range too. If an item that I would normally buy from Aldi or Home Bargains comes on offer at Tesco and works out cheaper I will buy a few from there and then knock these off next times shop. Like I have said in a previous post I also pop into the local coop some evenings and check out the reduced fruit and veg. Last night I got fine beans for 20p, 3 large punnets of strawberries for 40p each and 3 punnets of cherries for 33p each.This is really helpful as we do eat a lot of fresh fruit, especially our daughter who is on a diet permanently as girls are!

Time will tell but I'm happy with how things are working out so far.
What little tricks do you have for stretching the housekeeping? Do you find avoiding visiting the supermarket helps cut spending? Do you visit various shops to get the best prices?

Until tomorrow
Jules x













I will try to read all comments and reply. Please be polite and kind. Thanks :)

17 comments:

  1. For as long as I can remember, I've had an ongoing battle with trying to keep the weekly shop prices down. I don't stick with one supermarket - we have them all within 10 miles of us. I tend to flit from place to place and never manage to save any money on groceries. It was extortionate when all 3 kids were at home and hubby and I were both working full-time, meaning time was of the essence and a lot of convenience food was bought. Now that there's just the 2 of us I haven't cut the bill as much as I thought I'd be able to. I've tried all sorts of stuff - freezer inventories/meal planning etc., but still our main expense seems to be food (by food bills I include all toiletries, cleaning products, etc in this). It's a work in progress for me!!

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    1. I still tend to buy more food than i need and actually cook bigger portions as i'm so used to cooking for a large family but there are only three of us at home now and only two some evenings. Old habits die hard to us mums x

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  2. I live alone so buying food for single portions is expensive. I've found that buying family size packs, bulk cooking and freezing as separate portions is a big help in keeping my food bill down. I have lots of food allergies so avoid beef and dairy, and don't eat much of other meats, preferring chicken or fish, and I do have three or four vegetarian days each week - a health choice rather than an ethical one.

    Lately I've been having one monthly delivery of all the basics from Tesco, I buy toiletries and cleaning products from B&M or Home Bargains, and eggs, fresh fruit and veg from the local farm shop.

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    1. My mum has the same problem Eileen and sometimes makes a huge pie or pot of stew then says shes eating it for days or trying to give it away to family members. I tell her to
      portion it up and freeze it or it works out expensive. Single portions are expensive to buy yet I don;t understand why.x

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  3. i do most of shopping at supermarkets, because they are far cheaper here than anything else. No farmers markets available. There is a plan to open the market hall, it's been closed since 1974..
    Best way to save in shopping is to NOT to take hb with me. He picks odd things and most expensive products and refuses to put them back. It is easier and cheaper to shop with 5yr than him.
    I have a list, and if I buy only items on that list, I get on very cheaply.
    Another thing to help reduce costs is to shop only once a week - I'd rather shop pnly once every fortnight, but milk expires so fast that it is impossible (and with four kids and three cats there has to be milk in the house; and yes I know, most cats are lactose intolerants, so lactose free milk).

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    1. Ha ha Ulvmor that is my problem too if I take hubby. They're worse than kids! x

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  4. We make our washing machine liquid and use clear vinegar as a fabric conditioner. Costs less than 5p per wash for both. Also make our own cleaning product most of the time. We menu plan for a month and only shop for a week. We don’t necessarily eat what is down for each day if we don’t fancy it. The planned meals though get eaten somewhere in those 7 days. Our all in bill for food and toiletries is between £30 and £40 for us two. Meat is added as a taste to mainly vegetarian meals as we find it just too expensive. We will eat it as part of the main meal as a treat.

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    1. That sounds like a great idea. Do the clothes smell of vinegar or does it disappear in the wash? x

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  5. I peruse the grocery flyers each week and see if there is anything there I can stock up on...Fortunately I have lots of cupboard space. Don't ask about counter space though....tears will flow. I mentioned once here about my trick of buying 50% off meat. Any store I'm in I always check to see if there are any good meat deals. Produce I buy on an almost daily basis as I find it just doesn't keep well for us. We do eat well...lots of fresh produce and lots of meat, nothing preprepared, no bread or condiments or sugary juices or pop...but we are addiced to coffee which I buy in bulk when it is on sale. It's just the two of us with the occasional visit from the grandies. We run around $700 a month...down $300 from the way we used to shop which was once a week on just one store.

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    1. I love a nice coffee too. Can't beat it. You've managed to really get your shopping bill down. It's amazing isn't it how just a bit of time and effort to shop around can really save some money.

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  6. I only peruse the grocery flyer of the biggest grocer in our country, Albert Heijn. Nearly all our shopping is done there.
    In the Netherlands there are only few farmshops (despite the fact that we are an Agricultural country), but whenever we visit the UK we like buying there.
    My husband likes the Aldi flyers, every now and then he sees something that he is interested in. Yes, the middle aisles items ;-)

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    1. Those middle Aisles have a lot to answer for Ivy. I'm surprised you don't have more farm shops though. Why is that do you think? x

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  7. I found that getting a home delivery encouraged me to buy more as I kept finding offers on items that i would have not been aware of otherwise if i had not been scrolling through online pages.

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    1. I made that mistake at first Gillian so now I have to be quite firm with myself and only buy what we need unless there is something on offer for a good price that we usually buy that I can stock up on x

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  8. We eat mainly ys items as you do cooking fresh from scratch, I batch cook and use lentils and veg to bulk out meals. I freeze as much as I can and buy things when on offer. I take advantage of supermarket vouchers they send either by email or post. I stockpile when I use the voucher on coffee and tin items that will keep. There's just 2 of use now and last month I only spent £85.14 I've set myself a budget of £100 per month, I've cutting back year on year even though prices are rising. I treat it as a challenge and I enjoy it xx

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    1. Wow that is amazing saving. You've done really well to get it so low. you must let me have some of your recipes x

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  9. I shop monthly and then top up with fresh stuff as required. I think I'm pretty good at using food up imaginatively and very rarely waste anything. The amount of rubbish in some trollies astounds me! I shop 80% in Tesco and the rest might be Waitrose, Iceland or Asda depending on convenience on the day. From time to time I set myself a target of using up the overstocked freezer and cupboards.

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