Frugal Grocery February

I mentioned in a post earlier this week that I was planning to do Frugal February again. I’ve just inventoried my stockpile and we have so much food I can't fit anything else in my freezers.  Half of me is patting myself on the back and other half is horrified at how much I have.

Some of you expressed an interest in giving this a try.  There really are no hard and fast rules. Everyone’s grocery budget is different so I can't arbitrarily say what people should spend. You need to come up with your own goal for your grocery budget for the month.  A 30% reduction for a month ? 50% ? I did this challenge this time last year and spent about half of my usual budget. I'm going for the same target this year. Our weekly budget is less this year since our household size has halved but I think I can still do it.  

So here is my plan :

Armed with my freezer inventory I'm going to make a menu plan each week based around what food I already have. Then I'll only spend money on what is necessary to pad out my planned menu. That's likely to be things like fruit, vegetables, bread and milk.

My grocery shopping total will include everything I normally buy including cleaning items, toilet paper, toothpaste and other personal care items.  Since I already have 108 toilet rolls here we probably wont need to buy bog paper. I'm always planning for a gastro outbreak. And for the washing powder factory to go on strike.

I'll post my main meal menus each week so you can see we aren't living on canned spaghetti or two minute noodles week in and week out.

My goals are to save money, still eat well,  and start clearing out those freezers. I am a serial meat buyer and this is going to mean some significant change on my part for February since my plan is to buy no meat at all.

I'll report back weekly with a post on Mondays and the next weeks menu plan. You can link up if you're playing so other participants can see how you're doing.  I suspect this is going to make for some interesting and creative meals. Feel free to share recipes, frugal tips and whatever else you like! It's amazing what you can make with what you already have stashed in your cupboards /pantry and freezer if you engage in a bit of pre-planning.

The challenge starts February 1st and runs through to February 28th inclusive. To make it interesting,   I'm going to offer a prize to the person who saves the most percentage wise off their groceries for the month . If you're overseas I'll send you a little something Aussie to pop in  your pantry in March- how does that sound? And if you're Australian and you win, I'll send you something fabulously South Australian. We'll work on the honour system here - at the end of the month you email me the percentage you saved based on your normal budget and I'll take you at your word and announce a winner. In the case of two people getting the exact same percentage we'll let random number thingy choose the winner.

So who wants to play and how much do you think you can shave off your grocery budget for February?