Week 2 Of Our Grocery Reduction Act

Sorry I didn't post this on Sunday like I did for Week 1, but I really wanted to get my giveaway up and running yesterday. 

Anyway, I barely squeaked in under $40/week for groceries budget for the second week of March.  I noticed that our deep freeze could really use a good defrosting and cleaning; all the more reason to quit buying so much food.

Here are the numbers:

Needed: 5 lb. box of mandarin oranges, 1 gallon milk, 3 lb. onions, 23 yogurts (Kat and I eat at least 1 a day, every day when we buy it), 2 dozen eggs, 1 can baking powder, 1 head cabbage, 1 qt. half & half, 1 lb. pork sausage, 100-ct. tea bags.

Not really needed: 1 can crescent rolls and 2 bags of tortilla chips for the Red Gold Tomato recipes I wrote about yesterday, a 16-oz. bottle of Irish Stout for Irish Stew on St. Pat's Day, and 2 avocados to go with a Mexican meal later this week.

I had coupons for the oranges, onions, sausage, tea and all of the yogurt, so my Total spent for food = $38.77. 


We're gearing up for gardening.  That, along with three co-pays, some prescriptions and a great deal on cat litter pushed the numbers into the fat zone this week.  (Remember, all of these are separate from our grocery budget):

Health/Beauty:  1 box generic decongestant, 4 monthly Rx, 1 new Rx, co-pays on eye exams for Kat and me, co-pay for my trip to urgent care - $67.03 minus $40.00 in instant rebates on Rx = $46.86

Paper products, cleaning/laundry supplies - 0.00

Cat food/litter - 4 cans of canned food and 126 lbs (yes, 126!) of pine pellet litter =  20.77*

Lawn/garden - Potting soil, 15 packets of vegetable seeds, some onion and garlic sets, and some rhubarb plants - $42.32


*We use pine litter instead of plain or scented clay litter.  It smells fresher and, for us, lasts much longer than other litter.  Last week,  we found 7-lb bags on clearance for $1 each, which was 25% less than the cheapest we can find it elsewhere.  We "scooped" it all up; it should last us about a year! 

As for the canned cat food, four cans is a month's supply.  We open one can on the weekend as a "treat" for our cats.  They get dry food the rest of the week.