Works for Me Wednesday: Budgeting foods

Last week I explained how we shop once a month for the main bulk items and then every two weeks for the stuff you are bound to run out of or which will spoil.

Now, our whole family is home all day everyday.  My husband works from home, so do I, and we homeschool our three little lunatics angels.  We don’t do menus or even planned meals because we are together constantly and interact constantly and eat pretty much when we are hungry and what we are hungry for.  This means that we will go on food kicks and the kids will eat all the eggs in less than a week or my husband will eat all the pretzels or I will eat all my chocolate  almonds.  Whatever.

The point is that yes, we do run out of things. We will run out of things.  We are bound to run out of things.   In the past this is what got us into trouble.  The whole point is NOT to run out to the store just because we are out of saltines since that is when I spend extra money.

Instead, everyone knows that I bought this enough food to last a month and other than a few perishables that I will pick up  on my “small” grocery trip at the two week mark, it will ast us till the next big shopping trip.  I have my grocery days on the calendar so the kids know how long before the next shopping trip and if they decide that they want to eat all the waffles this week then they will have to wait for the next “big” shopping trip for more waffles.  If they finish off the eggs or some other “small” item (anything that is refrigerated falls into this category because our family owns a fridge that once belonged to my single aunt–its a bit small) then they wait for my next two week trip.  Both are marked on the calendar.

This way everyone knows that if they want waffles during the rest of the month they had better not eat them all the first week.  I like to think of it as training them to budget their foods so the good stuff lasts. 🙂 It also teachesd them patienc and wisdom and saves us money.