How does a family of five live on $100.00 a week for groceries? With a kitchen inventory, of course! You may be surprised at how well you and your entire family adjusts.
This article includes a downloadable excel document to help a person begin to inventory their kitchen.
With gas prices rising, so does the price of everything else, including food and supplies for the home. Toss in the fact that many of us return to the store multiple times a week for a single item, and that those small, quick trips always turn into large hauls; it is just too costly to shop anymore. We had to find a solution.
My husband is awesome. He brings home the bacon and sometimes fries it, too. Although we both agree that we are happy with me as the main cook, he dabbles a bit in the kitchen. And quite successfully, I might add. However, since I began to try to actively save money a few things have changed in the kitchen, and they are driving him nutz. This is fun!
The first thing any sane person does to save money is to start a budget. To start a budget we have to honestly lay out all of our income and all of our debts. Take it from me, this will be very painful! This usually takes three or four tries because the honesty factor depresses most of us. Once we have that budget down, we also go through a moment of disbelief as to how much we spend on different items, or on different needs. For us, this epiphany came when we looked at what we were spending on groceries.
Now, I define groceries as anything you would buy on a typical grocery store run. This includes food items as well as things such as garbage bags, toiletries and laundry items.
At the time we finalized our budget, we were spending an average of $1,000.00 a month on groceries! Yea, a GRAND! That adds up to $12,000.00 a year. Or to put it bluntly, a NEW CAR! Hello? This was unacceptable. Some people do not even make that much money in a single year, much less spend that much to eat. Something had to change.
So, I came up with an arbitrary number of $100 a week. Why $100? It was a starting point, a stab in the dark, because money-wise that is where I am, in the dark. The plan is to see if we can live reasonably on $100 a week on groceries with out social services paying us a visit to check on our children. So far, we have done quite well!
To further reinforce this ideal budget of $100 a week, I popped open the excel program and laid out an extensive inventory of all the items in our kitchen, the pantry, fridge, bathrooms and laundry area. I saved the original as the main, and printed out one copy. I took this copy (Three Sheets!) and went to work.
It took me two days to completely inventory everything we had. Who knew we would have 9 cans of kidney beans stashed away? I also found 12 cans (yes twelve cans) of something without a label. There was no telling what it was or how long it had been there. I didn’t have the guts to open it. The mystery cans were thrown away.
Here is how we used to do it. We would sit at the table with a pen and paper and try to remember what we need, inevitably forgetting the one thing we were headed to the store in the first place. Giving up on the list, or forgetting it in the car was our usual mode of operation. This is why, when we get to the checkout stand, we end up with more in our cart than we budgeted for. “Did we need any of these?” “Who knows! They were on sale, so I got them!” Now I understand how the 9 cans of kidney beans got there.
Once I knew what we did and did not have, I could more efficiently shop for the "Holes in the Inventory". This left no room for "Guessing" what we needed when making a list.
Now, if you have a home inventory (Think Restaurant) then you will only need to grab the inventory off the wall or clipboard and "Fill in the Holes"! This is working for us so well, that last week I only spent $41.59 in total groceries for the week! And there was no going back to the store for one or two things, if we ran out. We simply toughed it out and re adjusted our inventory list.
Now, my husband was informed about this list. "When you use something, mark it off on the inventory list!", I told him. Did he listen? Well, sort of. He thought it was a great idea, but he found it cumbersome to work with. When he cooks, he never “Fixes” anything for dinner, he “Mixes” something for dinner. This means, he puts a pot on the stove and simply begins to throw odd things into it until it smells good. No one for thinking about what he is doing, he made an incredibly delicious dinner for all of us but could not remember how much of what he may have used. So, I asked him to try to recount what he put in his design.
After he finished with his rant about how “You cannot inventory art.”, I mentioned that I could shave $600.00 off our monthly grocery bill. It was quiet for so long, I thought time had frozen. He immediately turned around, grabbed some paper and began recounting what he used to mix his meal.
As I walked off, he reminded me smugly, “This doesn’t mean I agree, you know!” “Yes it does!”, I said under my breath giggling as I walked away.
I placed the list on the wall with a pen tied to the wall to leave no room for excuses. While mixing another one of his famous "Specials" made of noodles, tomato sauce and anything loose in the kitchen, I was hovering over him asking, "Did you mark that off? What about those? Did you get those?”, and so on. He became so frustrated, he walked out of the kitchen, turned back towards the kitchen, glaring at me and told me to, "CHECK THE INVENTORY!” So I did....
It was beautiful! He had marked off how many noodles (Ounces) he used, including how many cups of milk, or slices of bread. Whooo Hoooo! I walked out of the kitchen asking him, "Would you like me to prepare the table for you, Chef?" Now he is the one who hovers over me, asking, "Did you mark those off?" And at $41.59 for the week’s grocery bill, how can we argue? This is fun!
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