this woman’s work

My grocery bill

Mar 24, 2009 The Story of My Life

(Inspired by AmFam)

Our food bill for the week averages out to about $125 (including eating out). Sometimes more, very often less. I can feed us for a week on $75 without difficulty and have been able to do it for fifty when the budget was tight last summer. I spent $175 last Sunday and that will get us to this next Saturday and the only reason it was that high to begin with is that we had dog food ($14), laundry detergent and dishwasher detergent and toothpaste and hairbands, otherwise it’d have been closer to $150 or less. I also bought a dozen loaves of bread and snacks at the Pepperidge Farm discount store so that was an extra $30 (we also got goldfish crackers and Mint Milanos).

Here’s how I do this:

• I menu plan. I don’t understand how anyone grocery shops without a menu plan. I plan seven to eight meals, a general idea of lunch menus and one or two things I plan to bake for breakfasts or snacks.
• I am flexible but firm when planning. I look ahead to my week so I know how much time I expect to have in the kitchen. If work/homeschool is looking busy, I need to take that into account. For example, Thursdays are crazy around here. I know we’ll be leaving in the morning and that when we get back will be unpredictable. Either that will be a pizza or Chipotle night or I need to do the crockpot. If  I’m going to do the crockpot, then I need to soak my beans on Tuesday or Wednesday. I rarely buy canned beans because I can get more for less if I soak and cook my own. I freeze the leftovers and there’s another dinner ready and waiting.
• I can also meal plan on the fly at the store. If I show up and there’s something unexpected on sale, I have enough recipes memorized that I can set aside one of my planned meals and shop for a different one. (When I shop I have a list and on the side I also have a list of the meals/snacks I’m going to be making so I can keep track of what ingredients go with what.)
• I add up the cost as I go through the store so I know how much we have to splurge on, say, string cheese or granola bars. There’s always room for splurging because what would life be like without that??
• We don’t eat red meat. We do eat fish and poultry.
• I keep a supply of staples on-hand that can let me create meals or snacks quickly and without much bother. This staple includes baking supplies, lentils, rice, oatmeal, maple syrup, eggs, cheese, pasta, onions, garlic, potatoes, canned tomatoes and frozen veggies. Stuff like that. So i can pretty much always make a batch of oatmeal cookies for a playdate or a fruit crumble for the pears no one is eating and are getting too soft. Also popcorn is a cheap, high-fiber snack that’s easy to make and pretty much everyone likes it (so it’s good for playdates, too). My mom recently bought us a Whirly-Pop and man, we use that thing ALL THE TIME. We love plain old popcorn but we also love caramel corn, which is a cinch to make on your stovetop.
• We don’t eat organic (because we can’t afford it, obviously) but this budget includes some organics like when Madison wants YoBaby and the really good turkey sausage we all like. I would much rather be able to afford eating fully organic and think it’s worth the extra money but it’s not in our life right now so I wince and buy conventional.
• I have learned to make something out of nothing. Our budget is low in part because I don’t always have time to shop. I try to shop Sundays (before I had a job it used to be Tuesdays). If I miss it, I don’t always know when I’ll get back out — it depends on work and homeschooling. So I’ve learned how to pull those staples out and make a good, nutritious meal. Meals like: Roasted potatoes with onions and garlic, Scrambled eggs with some cheddar and the left-over salsa; Pasta with butter and parmesan and frozen veggies; Rice with soysauce and frozen veggies,  Lentils with sauteed onions and garlic; French toast with the stale bread in the freezer. And then you can, as Julia says, bitch these things up. Like the left-over cream cheese? Put it between slices of bread for your french toast. Add some frozen blueberries for the kids who like it. That breakfast sausage your kid refused might be good with the roasted potatoes. True frugality means you use everything so look around and see what might be tucked away and ready to use.
• I use my left-overs. I make meals in part to turn left-overs into lunches. For example, the meal I’m making tonight I’m making so that I have something to take in my lunch tomorrow. I also use the left-overs from recipes so if I’m buying chicken broth for one recipe then I make sure I’m going to have another recipe that uses the rest of the broth. I don’t let things go to waste. Heck, even left-over yogurt can be used in a muffin recipe. (It’s what I sometimes do with the kids’ half-eaten yogurts. Yes –it’s gross but then I only serve ‘em to the kids who left the half-eaten container in the ‘fridge anyway. Left-over yogurt also makes good homemade popsicles in the summer. And if the child is like Madison and prone to leaving many containers with just a few bites left, you can make them stripe-y and the child in question will happily eat the stuff she was refusing in its thawed state.)
• I am not hard core about buying stuff on sale the way the true frugal hosuewives are but there are certain things I won’t buy unless they cost X. Brett will budge from this but I won’t. (I won’t pay more than two bucks a box for cereal, for example.)
• I rely heavily on frozen veggies and frozen fruit. It doesn’t go bad, it can be used in a myriad of ways and it’s nutritious. (I especially love frozen fruit because the kids eat it alone as a snack, we can use it in smoothies if we’re running late and need a quick breakfast, I can use it baking and if I’m rushing dinner out to the table I can stir it into plain yogurt, add a little cinnamon and call it dessert.)
• I weigh my time against my budget and make allowances. There’s a lot I make homemade because it’s easy and I like to do it. There are other things I know I could make but don’t think it’s worth the bother (pasta, crackers, and lately I haven’t wanted to roast a whole chicken so I’ve been buying broth).
• The Pepperidge Farm store is my friend. I’m picky about bread (and again, here, I used to bake our bread every week but that’s not in the cards for me these days) and I buy whole wheat without high-fructose corn syrup or transfats and that stuff’s expensive. I can get stale-ish bread at Pepperidge Farm that’s just fine for PB&J and turkey sandwiches for much less than at the store. I can also buy goldfish crackers for about 1/3 of the grocery store price. I buy lots of boxes and dump ‘em out into big glass jars on our counter so the kids can scoop their own.

It takes a lot of planning but the planning has become second-nature. I keep an eye on our diet for the whole day so if the kids have, say, pancakes in the morning (just about every Wednesday I make pancakes or waffles because it’s Noah’s paper route day and it’s my way of sending him out into the wide, wide world well prepared) then I’m not going to make them pasta that night. Or if they have Mac & Cheese for lunch (as an aside, I do make boxed Mac & Cheese but I’ll buy extra macaroni pasta and add it to the box to double the pasta and make left-overs for the next day’s lunch) I’m going to fix something for dinner with more protein.

Sometimes I can stretch a  meal plan beyond it’s limit by sending Brett out for a mini grocery shopping. I’ll give him a list and a $25 budget and he’ll come back with stuff to get us to when I have time to do a major shopping. There’s a lot you can do with eggs, milk and a chunk of cheese if you have the right staples in your cupboard.

I didn’t realize how hard this was to do out of the gate until our grocery bill shot up while Brett was in charge. I grew into cooking for our family but early on in our marriage with children, I knew that one of my jobs if I was home with our kids was to make money by saving money. I took it seriously and read a lot about it. I have had to be flexible about my limits — both monetarily and time-wise. For awhile I kept blowing our budget because I wanted to pretend we would never get take-out and that I’d always make everything — even crackers — from scratch. It wasn’t realistic. (However those homemade crackers were delicious!)

Now this is all second nature to me. The routine is easy and I’m teaching it to the kids. Noah usually votes to skip out on shopping these days but I’m training Madison like I trained Noah. They help me menu plan, weigh in on what sounds good, check the cupboards for what we’re missing and they help shop. I teach them how to read shelf tags, explain when the sale isn’t really a deal and we read labels. I explain when cheaper isn’t better and when it is and they are learning to pick out decent produce. Noah’s become really good at shopping and I imagine Madison will, too.

I talk to them the whole time I’m shopping about what I’m doing. I think out loud while I’m there so they know why I’m scrapping the eggplant dish (no good eggplants) and how I’m going to replace it. They also help scan at the self checkout and then unload the groceries. My kids? They have a lot of ownership about feeding the family because they participate in it. They don’t always want to eat what I cook (the big one is the picky one) but the saving money part is a game they want to win.

Further, they know how to wrap up their sandwiches for a snack later and Madison has learned how to scrape her left-0ver yogurt into a popsicle mold. Madison — like Noah before her — helps make the pancakes, waffles, muffins, etc. (As an aside? Left-over waffles on Wednesdays are Noah’s favorite afternoon snack.)

Probably they will grow up and want to eat out every single night and never, ever enter a grocery store or making any darn thing from scratch but at least they’ll be able to feed their families decently and within budget if they have to.

Tags: baking, budget, Erica, homeschool, Homeschooling, Julia, Madison, money, my mom, Noah, Recipes

No [wo]man’s land

Feb 10, 2009 Parenting, work work work

I’ve been a work-at-home mother in earnest for about six or seven years. I dabbled before and I’ve had quieter times some years/months than others but since 2002ish I’ve been making a decent-sized to full-time contribution to our family’s finances.

Am I proud of that? Oh hell yeah. Very proud. But somedays (today) I am also very tired.

I’m not quite a working mother because I do most of my work from home. But I’m not quite a stay-at-home mom either because I’ve got responsibilities that go beyond my family sphere.

Because I’m the one home and because I generally like it and am good at it, I’m also the one responsible for most of the family meal planning, grocery shopping and cooking. And here may I give a shout out to my trusty crockpot, without which my family would eat a lot less healthfully and for much more expense. We buy few packaged or processed foods and so I also do a lot of baking and snack prep. Being the one closest to the kitchen most days, I handle breakfast and lunch.

We split the difference in housekeeping but the day-to-day picking up falls to me because that’s the reality — if I’m the one tripping over it then I’m the one either picking it up to put it away or I’m the one hollering at one of the kids to do it.

Speaking of kids, I do the bulk of the raising of them. Again, it’s all about proximity. When Brett’s home it’s an even split with allowances made for other responsibilities like budgeting (Brett) and never-ending laundry (me, because Brett has ruined too many of my cold-wash only clothes). Also I tend to work in the evenings, which means Brett usually gets small people ready for bed although I’ll come by for a story and snuggle.

We are both crazy-busy. Brett works ten hour days most days and I work in bits and pieces all day and into most evenings. Our kitchen floor is sticky and the dishes tend to pile up. We should dust more and the vacuum seems to spend more time in the closet than it should. We both have occasional clothes crises when we realize someone has run out of socks. Our life is nuts.

Most of the time I’m fine with the way things are. I’m pretty smug with all we manage to get done on a day-to-day basis. We’re an at-home, working, homeschooling family and somehow we manage to do it and every one is clothed and fed and attended to. Lately I’ve even managed to get on the elliptical trainer three or four days a week. We rock!

But oh lord, we are so tired.

The summer before this I went to visit a friend who is at-home with two kids — both schoolaged although it was summer so they were home. She also has a weekly housekeeper and money to burn, which means that stopping for a pizza on busy girl scout’s night is no big deal. They have a big, sunny, spotless house and visiting her is a little like a mini-vacation to me.

My friend is a lovely person, committed to homemaking in the best sense — decorations for every major holidays, personally packed lunches with a note tucked behind the thermos, fresh cookies and milk every afternoon — and then she got an offer to do a volunteer project that she really wanted. It was a big project but nothing beyond the order of chairing a PTA fundraiser. I mean, she’d have to scrap less for a couple of months, maybe stop for that pizza one night more. And the pay-off would be totally worth it.

“But Dawn!” she said. “How on earth will I have time?”

And I laughed and laughed and laughed and then I saw she was serious and I told her she’d figure it out. But really I was thinking that maybe I was the wrong person to ask because from my vantage point she had nothing but time. I mean, if I had her kind of time (and a housekeeper to boot), I could have written twelve books by now.

But on the way home (still chuckling in my car) I realized that this is one of the mixed blessings of having to work and having a family — you really find out how much you can get done when you just have to do it.

Anyway. I’m tired today and the kids were obnoxious so I’m looking at staying up late banging on my keyboard. I’m feeling a little sorry for myself (especially because I had to turn down a couple of fun social events for which my schedule would NOT make way). My working life doesn’t always comfortably make room for the primacy and urgency of my home life and my at-home world doesn’t always understand the primacy and urgency of my working life. In a lot of ways — and most days I can see it like this — I feel like I have the best of both worlds but in a few other ways — and it happens today I’m seeing more of this — I feel like I can’t get my head above water.

Here’s what I know though, having been down this road before: I’m still learning this job and I’m pretty hard on myself to be on the ball right away so I’m wasting a lot of energy kicking myself for not already being at 100%. Likewise, when I feel down about one thing I tend to visit my bad mood on every little aspect of my life. So not only do I suck at my job (only I don’t — I know this objectively) but I’m a terrible mother ruining my kids with my neglect (only remember I’m a fan of benign neglect) and I miss all the fun (because of the two missed social engagements even though there is plenty of social fun in my life). I have to remember the parenthetical truths and dismiss the paranoia. It’s hard though — wallowing is so much easier.

(Writing this all down made me feel better so y’all can hold off on the virtual hugs. Now I’m kind of embarrassed to hit post but I’m going to in the interest of honesty even when it’s whiny.)

Tags: budget, cooking, crockpot, elliptical trainer, homeschool, Homeschooling, kids, telecommuting, work, working

Homeschooling is not endless snow days

Jan 29, 2009 Homeschooling

Today is the second snow day for most of my friends with schooled kids and I’m catching their laments on Twitter and Facebook. It got me to thinking about how often I hear, “Oh I could never homeschool! My kids would drive me crazy!” and how maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t.

I don’t think homeschooling is for every family or for every kid and there are a million and one reasons not to do it (the most important being if you don’t buy into the premise and the second being that regular old school suits you and your children just fine) but homeschooling is not like being stuck at home with your kid for snowdays or even summer vacation ad nauseum. Homeschooling is its own thing.

1. In homeschooling, you develop your own rhythm. My kids have a very loose schedule and other homeschooled kids have other kinds of schedules. But there are expectations and I think for most snowdays, everyone is simply hanging out and maybe having some special fun and maybe driving each other a little nuts because people are feeling thrown off their typical day. A snowday is an event! Homeschooling is your life.
2. In homeschooling, you ignore your kids a lot. This is a biggie. I was just talking to a friend about this. Contrary to common stereotypes, most homeschoolers I know aren’t any more involved with their kids lives than most schoolers I know. You figure most schooling parents are dealing with parent/teacher communications, supervising homework, getting kids up and ready, packing backpacks, maybe volunteering in the classroom, etc. I don’t do any of that. Most mornings while Noah’s working on school stuff, I’m cleaning the kitchen and we’ll chat back and forth about what he’s doing. There are times in our homeschooling life when I give him more attention and times when I give him less but our school-focused activities tend to be more casual and more flexible so I’d say that ironically I spend less time on my son’s schooling experience than my very conscientious sister spends on her son’s. (My sister is a boon to her son’s classroom and school because she does a lot not just for her son but for the other students in his class and in his grade. They are lucky to have her.)
3. Did I mention how you ignore your kids a lot? My kids are used to making their own fun. The little one still needs direction here and there when she’s not sure what to do next but very early on my kids learn to do for themselves when it comes to entertainment. Madison will sometimes whine about being bored (and then we pull out an art project or a tucked away game) but Noah’s grown out of that. He has lots of hours to fill every day and he’s learned to fill them. So you know how kids nag and whine and get annoying when a school break goes too long? My kids don’t do that. Having them here all the time doesn’t mean that they’re in my face all the time. I am a great believer in the value of benign neglect and I homeschool in part because of this. (I think my kids benefit from being ignored a lot and not having their days scheduled by big people.)

Anyway, a snow day is to homeschooling is to what the first three months of dating are to a marriage. It can give you an idea of what to expect but until the newness wears off and everyone gets down to the business of actually living, you don’t really know what it’ll be like.

The one thing I will say about homeschooling is that your house would likely be messier because people are living in it pretty much every hour of the day. That is one area in which I think schooled parents totally have it easier. But the rest? Homeschooling is a pretty lazy, pretty casual and pretty fun way to be a parent.

Tags: homeschool, Homeschooling