If you saw my grocery shopping trip post last week, you know that I’m testing out/contemplating a grocery budget increase again as our younger kids are getting older and our older kids are doing more sports, so everyone is eating more, which is fantastic!
This week, I tried something I’ve never done before: I went to Aldi and I didn’t calculate my running total as I put things in my cart. Instead, I just bought what I thought would be enough food to last us for the week. Yes, I looked at deals and sales but I wanted to see what it would cost to buy what I thought would actually last us well for the entire week without focusing on sticking to the budget to help me determine what a realistic budget is.
I’m honestly thinking we’ll go with $150/week after this experiment — just to give plenty of breathing room — but I want to try one more week and see if I think that’s the amount that I feel like will work for us for at least the next year or so!
Here’s what I bought for $137:
Here were some of the best deals I found…
Mandarins are $2.49 for a 3-lb bag. We love these for quick snacks or they are great to pack in lunches.
Grapes are $0.99/lb!
And this was crazy and I had to look three times to make sure it was actually correct — 10 pound bags of potatoes for $0.99!!!! They did look like they would need to be used up in the next few weeks, but I bought three bags and am excited to get creative over the next few weeks to use them up!
Here’s our menu plan for the week:
Breakfasts: Granola over yogurt, Baked Oatmeal, Smoothies, Fried Eggs/Avocados, Scrambled Eggs with Cheese and Toast, Oatmeal, Cereal
Lunches: Snack-y lunch, PB&Jelly, Turkey & Cheese, Leftovers, Salad (Kaitlynn and Silas have lunch at school some of the days)
Snacks: Ice cream & snacks I bought, Apples with Peanut Butter & Chocolate Chips, Cheese, Mandarins, Homemade Energy Bites, Pumpkin Bread, Chocolate Cake for Jesse’s birthday
Dinner: Potato Soup, Breakfast for Dinner, Meat Potato Quiche, Chicken Salsa Pizza, Sausage/Potatoes/Peppers/Onions, Dinner out, Leftover/Fend-For-Yourself
