Like I mentioned previously, I'm attempting to keep our food budget for our family of four to $300 per month (essentially forcing me to stick to meal plans, shopping lists, and using everything in my fridge/pantry) and our household basics (toilet paper, detergent, shampoo, pet food, etc) to $100 per month. Luckily I decided to start this at the beginning of a month so I can easily keep track of how I'm starting out. I waited to go shopping until we were literally down to rice and carrots. This means two large shopping trips (Fred Meyer and Costco) needed to happen, but they should be the biggest of the month and hopefully a few things will carry us quite far. Here's how it's adding up as of today, 9/8:
Food: $216.43
Household: $57.33
That means I have remaining for the rest of month:
Food: $83.57
Household: $42.67
The remaining household budget shouldn't be a problem. The only other things we might need to get this month would be shampoo, nighttime pull-ups for my three year old, and cat food/litter. In fact, I anticipate that we won't reach the $100 limit most months because I try to buy all my household basics at Costco and they tend to last me 2-3 months.
The remaining grocery budget could prove to be challenging. We were seriously out of everything though, so I had to restock the entire kitchen. I don't anticipate having to restock quite so much each month because I get my baking ingredients at Costco as well, so that will last a little while as well. This is really going to depend on what I can do meal planning wise and how much batch cooking I can manage. It's going to be interesting for sure. I won't decide to make any changes to the food budget for a couple of months though. I want to get a decent picture of what we REALLY need before I decide that $300 isn't working.
I'll definitely keep you updated on how it's going.
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