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1Bookworm
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| Posted: May 23 2005 at 8:34am | IP Logged
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Good morning everyone.
I've been lurking here awhile. I love to hear about how other large families are finding creative ways to get things done. I wasn't raised in a large family so this is all new to me. :-)
We've been homeschooling for 7 yrs (Sonlight and CM style) and I have 5 children, 11, 8, 5, 3 and a newborn. We are converts from evangelicalism.
I'm wondering, do you go shopping every week for food, or do you shop less frequently and stock up? I used to do the stock up thing (3 different stores every 2 weeks) and it worked very well, but its not working as well anymore. I think my kids are going through a growth spurt, and realistically, its only going to get worse.
Part of me thinks: I'm a mother of a large and growing family, and we need food in the house, so that means one of my responsibilities is shopping as often as necessary. The other part of me thinks: Grocery shopping should be done as little as possible, because it takes time from my homeschooling and other obligations in the home. I recently moved to a more rural area, too, and now the grocery, warehouse, and health food stores are much further away than they used to be...almost an hour, one way, so its A LOT of time out of my day to go shopping, messing up naptimes, etc...My thumb is about as black as it gets, so until one of my children takes up gardening, thats not an option for us. I've looked into food cooping in the area but I don't think I can afford to get everything from them since it's all premium organics. If I'm going to start shopping weekly, I'm actually going to have to shorten that hs day, too. There's no getting around that, and we already do that on other days to accomodate my kid's activities. I guess we could go every Saturday, but it seems totally depressing to me to spend 1/2 of every Saturday in a busy grocery store.
Am I missing something? I'm already fairly organized, with a master grocery list on the computer, etc. Is there an easier way to do this? Or am I just going to have to start shopping weekly?
What do you think?
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As you enter this life, I pray you depart with a wrinkled face and a brand new heart.
~U2
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Bridget
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| Posted: May 23 2005 at 9:11am | IP Logged
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I have recently started doing a big shopping once a month. I take my 3 oldest with me to help. We go to Costco and Wal Mart. Now we just do weekly stops for milk and produce, my dh often does this on his way home from work.
Our pantry is too small for everything so I made the coat closet in the entry way into a second pantry for now. We also have a big freezer in the garage.
We have a 4 week menu plan on index cards. There is one week on a card and filed behind that week's card are the recipes for that week with the suggested sides listed on the same card as each recipe. It's just basic food. Meat loaf, spaghetti, tacos... I was trying to keep it simple and clear enough for my children to help with more of the dinner prep.
This is working well for us, other than the initial cash expenditure for the first big shopping. That was rough! 
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God Bless,
Bridget, happily married to Kevin, mom to 8 on earth and a small army in heaven
Our Magnum Opus
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stefoodie
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| Posted: May 23 2005 at 9:17am | IP Logged
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we do the co-op thing, but i still shop every week. it's easy to stock up on canned goods, meat, grain, etc. but what's been really tricky is the fruit/veggies 'cause you can't really stock up on those for a month. so this year we're doing a lot of veggie gardening too, hopefully that will help. as for organic food, i always try to buy what's on sale. like recently we got 5-pound bags of frozen strawberries really cheaply, it was on sale and we split a case of 20 pounds. you might find some people that have large families too that will be willing to split things like this.
hth,
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stef
mom to five
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Elizabeth
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| Posted: May 23 2005 at 9:27am | IP Logged
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For many years, we did the big stockup every two or three weeks and then my husband buzzed by the grocery store for the fresh itemswhen necessary. Now, we modify that a bit. I get a co-op delivery once a month and do a warehouse shopping once a week and do another fresh run halfway through the week. My kids are older; they eat a whole lot; and, finally, I can do it this way because I have stores close by (this is a new thing) and I can integrate grocery runs with carpooling to activities.
If I were you, I'd stock up everything that can be frozen or pantry-stored once month and then ask my husband to take a detailed "fresh list" to the store on his way home from work o nce a week or so.
I agree that once a week to shop an hour away from home takes too much time from your daily routine. And messing up naptimes is killer  !
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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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dhbrug
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| Posted: May 23 2005 at 10:14am | IP Logged
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Our solution is that I do all the shopping. This is much more efficient as I am out for work anyway so I drop in on the way home. Every month or so we do a trip to Sam's club as a family and get bigger bulk items and make a day of it as Sam's club is 2 hours away.
We also have plenty of storage space and I never buy just one of anything. This reduces our need to go shopping as often.
Cheers
David
dw Lana, dd Ariel, ds Eric, ds James, ds Peter, dd Clare, dd Rose
http://bruggietales.blogspot.com
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Willa
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| Posted: May 23 2005 at 11:04am | IP Logged
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Welcome newcomer,
Your situation is like ours a few years back -- I'm a convert from evangelicalism  , we live about 60 miles from the nearest name grocery store or warehouse, and I have seven kids but they are now ages 18 to 2. They eat a LOT!
What we do at present: My 5yo has dr's appointments in town about every 2 weeks and while I'm with him, DH takes the toddler and hits the different warehouses and major stores and stocks up on staples, sale items etc. DH works at home and since the other kids are older, they can stay at home together. I have a master shopping list so he works from that and can usually make it through the bulk of the shopping in 1 1/2 hours.
In between times, for the fresh supplies we usually go to the smaller grocery store about 20 miles from our house -- my children have baseball practice and youth group activities down there so we are down there usually a couple of evenings a week.
Our coop situation is like yours, a bit out of our price range, plus it's mostly imperishables which we can usually get in town anyway. Our soil is thin and poor because we live in a coniferous forest -- SOMEDAY I'm going to haul in soil and try a garden but I have reason to suspect my thumb is in the same colour spectrum as yours is! Anyway, I want to wait until my kids are old enough so I can really focus!!
One thing that really helps that probably most large families have, is an extra freezer. We keep ours in our garage. That way we can stock up on sale-price meat, bread, cheese and butter, and I can make extra muffins or dinner dishes to freeze as well. I can't imagine being a big rural family without one.
We used to have an extra refrigerator which was great for extra milk and fruit and eggs -- the kids go through those so fast and that's usually what sends us to the local market for re-stocks.
We have a good sized pantry, about like a walk in closet, and so again DH buys BIG on sale items... last year he bought restaurant-type storage tubs so we can get bulk flour, etc. WE keep powdered milk and canned or frozen fruit/veggies so if we DON'T get to the store again for some reason we can usually survive until next trip to town.
Anyway, perhaps if you have to shop more than once every couple of weeks and don't have a nearby market where you could zip in the evenings, you could do the BIG shopping every other week and then do an evening trip to town (or have your dh do it) and just go to the kinds of stores that are open in the evening? I hate Saturday shopping trips too! I like having weekends family-centered and shopping is so stressful on those days.
Welcome again and hope to "see" you again on the board
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AMDG
Willa
hsing boys ages 11, 14, almost 18 (+ 4 homeschool grads ages 20 to 27)
Take Up and Read
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stefoodie
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| Posted: May 23 2005 at 11:11am | IP Logged
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oh, forgot another tip. i shop early in the morning, around 6:30-7:30, before the kids are up. this way, we don't impinge on homeschooling time. i also avoid the traffic and crowded parking lots.
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stef
mom to five
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1Bookworm
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| Posted: May 23 2005 at 11:40am | IP Logged
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Bless you all!
We do have both an extra freezer and an extra deep freeze, which helps a lot. I buy 8-10 gallons of milk at a time, and make sure the expiration date is a full 2 weeks from my purchase date. Shelf storage at home could be better, but we have options and are working on that (we moved across the country about 4 months ago). :-)
I hadn't thought about having a plan for dh to stop once a week on the way home from work. That could work, I think, if I had a detailed list for him (of course, he has this tendency to always bring home ice cream or cookies when I send him to the store! LOL). I wonder...if I had dh stop once every week, maybe I could cut down on Trader Joe's and Sam's Club to once a month???
I'd have to bring dh with me for the stock up day. I can't really leave my kids alone yet, and its too much food for one cart if I were to go with just the baby.
I tried to do a big stock up shopping last week without him, and with all 5 ducklings. We were quite a sight...3 carts, a monkey toddler, a screaming newborn (I used to live in CA and it was no big deal to nurse modestly while walking around in a store, but we moved to a more conservative state and I feel weird about doing it now), and three others, the eldest pushing carts two and three, and my 5 y old hanging on the end of the cart. It was kind of funny to me that the only sympathetic smiles I got were from the Amish ladies who had traveled into town to shop (sans their babies, I might add!).
Oh boy, I thought I was organized just by having a list on the computer...the index system sounds great! I've been trying to routinize meals for years now, but it never seems to work for me. I was just thinking this morning that my oldest daughter is probably old enough to learn to cook one or two meals. If I gave her lots of practice over the summer when I can give her the attention, maybe she can do it without me looking over her shoulder in the fall...
I keep trying to come up with 2 full weeks of meals that we would all eat regularly, but I am always about 3 short...everything else is those basics every family has...enchiladas, spaghetti, etc...
I do have a relative nearby that I can split some coop items with...we recently split 25 lbs of oats. I'd like to get back into bread baking and will probably get grains from the coop, too, once I get a bit more settled here.
I hadn't thought of doing a really early morning shopping...that might work when dh is not able to stop for me.
Well, I think I am going to go back to my MROL and MOTH lists and see if I can make this work after all!
Thank you all so much. Sometimes its completely overwhelming to me to realize that I am the mother of five children, when I was just the eldest of 2 growing up. I'm just not sure *how* to do this big family thing, even though my heart has always wanted it this way.
Blessings to you all!
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As you enter this life, I pray you depart with a wrinkled face and a brand new heart.
~U2
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4Real Forums : Mothering and Family Life
Topic: Intro and more on lg families and food
