EVEN though we aspire to be the kind of mum who always has a home-cooked meal on the table, you’ll more likely find us doing a last-minute supermarket sweep to pick up fish fingers, potato waffles and peas for dinner… again.
Well despite the fact Nyssa Lehane has eight mouths to feed at home, the savvy mum has come up with a clever system which means she only ever has to do a big food shop once a MONTH.
Earlier this year, the Australian mum uploaded a video on her YouTube channel where she talked through her meal planning process.
As the family lives “off the grid”, it makes most financial sense for Nyssa to stagger her shops and buy ingredients in bulk.
In order to keep costs down, the mum has a massive diary where she keeps her “inventory” up-to-date.
As she has to feed eight people every night, the mum likes to keep a “base quantity” of certain things – such as pasta, rice, and oats.
She explained: “I have a list of what’s on the shelf, the base quantity of what I like to have available (which doesn’t include an open packet).
“And then in the [third] column, I like to write the number I’d need to buy to bring it back to the base quantity.”
For example, the mum has four packets of dried macaroni but likes to have six in as a back-up – meaning she needs to buy an extra two during her next food shop.
However, keeping a mini stockpile of these ingredients means that Nyssa doesn’t have to buy the products she finds in store if she doesn’t like the price that month.
She continued: “I didn’t buy any Arborio rice this month – I meant to and I didn’t because I didn’t see any at a decent price […]
“But because I keep such a high base quantity [of her essentials] available, I should still be able to get through to the next month regardless.
“I just need to bump up my stockpile next month.”
Unsurprisingly, the mum studies the shops’ catalogues and websites before she goes in for her food shop – which helps her avoid getting sucked into special offers and going over budget.
She said: “[Before I go in], I make sure that nothing I normally buy is on half-price. If it is, then I’ll grab a few of them because it is half price.
“I don’t buy things that are half-price just because they’re half-price.
“It has to be something that we’d normally purchase.
“I could have done that in the past when we had more money and more cashflow and we were shopping more regularly but […] I have managed to break that habit.”
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