Yesterday, I told you how you have to believe the Bible when it says children are a blessing. This is foundational to everything else I am going to say. You will continue to find fault with my suggestions if you do not first and foremost believe that each and every life brought into your family will bless your family and not lead to your family’s destruction.
So, the million dollar question…
How do you feed all of them?
Grocery prices are high right now, so it is imperative we get creative as homemakers. I will be the first one to tell you this is not an easy task. (In fact, just last night I made a very costly mistake by choosing to shop at a store in our new city that had MUCH higher prices than the usual store I shop at–thankfully, I have a very forgiving husband.) Meal planning and grocery shopping have taken more and more thought as my family has grown. Feeding a large family is not for the faint-hearted!
Garin just started eating solids a few days ago! I snapped this picture right after he finished a yummy bowl of avocados!
So, where do you start?
1. Decide how much you can spend. This has to be a logical number, but it also has to be a personal number. There have been times in our family’s life when buying a lot of fresh fruits and veggies was out of the question. We thrived on the days when we could gather apples in a friend’s orchard for cheap or grow our own in a garden. When I didn’t have a garden, I loved the summers when members of our church would bring the abundance of their gardens to church to share with everyone! Otherwise, fruits and veggies came from a can. And I’m not the least bit ashamed of that fact.
2. Let go of the guilt. Moms seem to have more than their fair share of guilt to deal with. Feeding our families is a biggie! I know you would love to feed them organically. I know you wish your meat was hormone free. I know you feel like a bad mom when you read all those great blogs about eating whole foods or only raw or mostly organic, but #1 (see above) on this list will ALWAYS trump your perfect mom dreams. Rather than live in a world of discontent, learn to be thankful for the grocery budget you do have!
3. Make priorities. This is where we get down to the nitty gritty. Perhaps you have a child who needs to eat gluten free, perhaps hormone free meat IS of the highest priority (remember my post on breastfeeding?) Most families have some sort of priorities when it comes to eating. I’m not going to ask you to change those; however, priorities almost always mean an increase in your grocery bill, so you have to take your priorities into account when buying groceries and making meal plans, and also realize no ready-made grocery list out there will be EXACTLY what you are looking for. (the only reason I have mine on here for you is so that you can see the METHOD behind my grocery list!)
4. Buy in bulk–especially the things from your Priority List. For us, that is meat. We buy a side at a time and save a mint! Yes, we do have to get creative to save up the money to buy it that way, but in the long run, we are saving money on our grocery bill. We also buy wheat berries and raw organic sugar in bulk to save long-run money because those are two other things that are a priority to us.
Companies like Azure Standard and Amazon.com
5. Learn the “basics.” This means a lot of different things. It means
*make your own rather than buy ready-made – Large families require more portions than what most convenience foods can offer. Learn how to make any ready-made products you buy, and you will save a lot! Baking mixes, spaghetti sauce, pizza…these are all things we used to buy ready-made, but now make ourselves.
*search out new ways of doing things – For me, this was learning about couponing through Grocery University. I also found out about Frontier coops through a friend. I asked other moms of many for their tips and tricks. Get the basics of these new ways of doing things by searching out people who have already been there ahead of you…the learning curve won’t be nearly as steep!
*have a Basic Menu & Basic Grocery List on hand - Start a document on your computer that you can easily change and begin writing up a grocery list and menu that tends to be the “usual” for your family. (Take a look at my Once-A-Month Shopping series for inspiration on how to do this!) This keeps your meal planning and grocery shopping more streamlined.
Then do a dry run at it with the lists and calculator in hand. Does your list stay within your budget? Where can you tweak it more? Do you need to budget in more bulk items or coupon sales where you stock up? Did you really need the amount of products you thought you needed? These questions and more will help you make your grocery list something liveable.
6. Share and share alike. Last summer we participated in a community garden. Other times we’ve benefited from neighbor’s gardens. My mom and my in-laws have brought us food or fed us meals from time to time. Ty’s office assumes the big family probably needs the leftovers from the office party. But we aren’t just big ole moochers! We give back. We labored in the community garden. We took our neighbor’s produce and made him a treat from it. We helped with cleanup in our family’s homes and fed them when they visited us. We took treats to Ty’s office from time to time to share with others and never expected the leftovers to always be ours. Live generously.
There are so many sites out there dedicated to helping you save money on groceries, that I won’t try to reinvent the wheel here, but keep in mind there are “deal bloggers” out there who are not necessarily frugal and many do not have the large family in mind. Be aware and focused as you search blogs for more ideas.
And never forget my #1 rule of thumb:
Something is NOT a deal if you didn’t NEED it.
There are a lot of things out there you simply do not NEED. When you have a large family, you quickly realize how unimportant certain things are in the grand scheme of things. The more unimportant things you cut out of your life, the better off your budget will be!
Affording Kids series:
Introduction
Feeding them – this post
Schooling them
Entertaining Them
Keeping Them Healthy
Garin is so adorable! I can’t believe he’s big enough for solids already, it seems like you were just introducing him to us!
I’m enjoying this series so far!
Girl you almost made me spit out my coffee and wake up sleeping 9 month old twins by screaming Amen Sister Hallelujah followed by a round of preach it sister! This is so true when we had 3 kids I wrote a sereis on grocery shopping and meal planning meant to help women maximize their time in the grocery store. Now with 5 kids its even more crucial that we are not wasteful. We took a break from our garden this summer when the twins arrived but in January I realized if we are going to eat fresh veggies and want fresh fruit we have to get back to work! My kids garden with me and its a true blessing to hear them singing Holy, Holy, Holy while they weed one of the raised beds. It also provides numerous spiritual oppurtunities to point out the similarities between our lives in Christ and gardening. Thanks for this post it made my day an the kids aren’t even awake yet. May our Lord Jesus richly bless the women that read this post and may they recieve into their hearts in His name. Thanks! Amy!
Rejoicing in Him Always!
Kyle @ Roosterhill
Wow! Thanks for the encouragement this morning, Kyle!
By the way, do you have a good, easy tutorial for doing raised beds?
I don’t have a tutorial but I’ve been working on a gardening series so I think Ill do one for next week.:) BTW several of my friends let me know this post blessed them. Grace & Peace sister!
I’m new to your site and have been perusing it . . . We have a family of 8 and I’ve used the Square Foot Gardening method for 5 years and really enjoy it. There’s a book or check out http://squarefootgardening.com/
Thanks so much for sharing your life and may the Lord continue to bless you.
You are awesome!!!!! Thank you SO much for sharing the real way that you shop!!! Thank you for telling us not to feel guilty about not being able to afford to feed our family fresh fruit and veggies all the time. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! I am doing the best I can on the budget that God has blessed us with and it isn’t huge. We live on a very fixed income and our expenses increased this past month as my husband was diagnosed with a new challenging medical condition.
You will never know how much your blog means to me!!! We only have 3 kiddos so our family isn’t as large as yours…but I still have a lot to think about in shopping and menu planning because my husband is diabetic and that means we blessed with making healthy meals w/low sugar and also have to watch the sodium. I’ve been thinking about making my own whole wheat baking mix so that it would be quicker and easier to make fresh biscuits and whole wheat tortilla mix too. Now I see it would save us money as well! Very cool!
You are such a blessing!!! I have learned so much from you and gotten so much encouragement as we raise our little arrows! I really look forward to the rest of your series!!!
You and your family are in my prayers!!
Building Home with Him,
Mary Joy
Mary Joy – {HUGS} Your comments this morning have been such a blessing!
almost forgot to tell you…I am sharing this with my facebook friends!!!
Amy, thanks for sharing this series. While I don’t have a big family yet, we will – God willing – someday and I look forward to using some of the ideas you’ve shared then AND now!
Your blog is so encouraging and inspiring – thank you! *hugs*
Thank you for #2, especially.
It’s interesting you should talk about this now.
This month we’re taking on a challenge to try to reduce our grocery bill, while still eating organic and natural foods. I’m blogging about it and challenging all my readers to participate! I’ll be sharing lots of tips and tricks we’ve learned to save. (We also buy whole animals…yes, we actually bought a WHOLE cow about two months ago.) I’m trying to get down to $360 for a family of 4 BIG eaters on a special (mostly grain-free) diet, so this ought to be interesting!
That sounds very interesting, Kate!
I started shopping once a month since reading about it on your blog and that has saved us a lot of money (and time and tired children). And it feels so good to be “stocked up” for the month.
Great stuff, Amy! I’m thinking economizing the food budget actually works in your favor health-wise. processed foods are expensive. Whole foods are good deals (consider pre-packaged oatmeal packages versus a huge container of oats).
I was so excited to get back to using coupons in America. But I realized that if you cook from scratch, there aren’t a lot of coupons FOR you. I only cut out those for things I really NEED and think are good food choices (or splurges that we can rightfully enjoy).
I’ll bet you have a blast writing these posts! I’m training my kids to shop smart right now (one at a time); perhaps I’ll blog about it.
Thanks for sharing!
Corine
Great post! Lisa~
Love this, Amy. Thank you. For our family of 11 we shop very frugally, and make from scratch mostly (including recently grinding our own wheat berries, like you mentioned). I’m encouraged to continue to fine great recipes for more things we buy, like spaghetti sauce. Would you share your great sauce recipe? =)
Blessings!
It is not a great recipe, but it’s a recipe! lol I just do tomato sauce, italian seasoning I buy through Frontier coop, garlic powder and onion salt, and a bit of pepper. If I were going to can it, I would get more involved, but everyone likes this and it is easy to do right there in the pot. (and the great part is NO SUGAR!)
We are just a family of 4 but living with no steady income we do have to be frugal-and food is a easy way to be frugal. (don’t eat out, meatless monday, make your own, etc)
For menu planning I use http://www.homeplansoftware.com/shoplist.htm it’s a free download and AWESOME. You put in your items, your categories and your prices, and after a few trips to the store it’s SUPER easy to budget what you can buy BEFORE you even set foot in the store! (it helps to know when you can afford to splurge on your family’s favorite more expensive meals)
Could you please tell me where you order your sugar and specifically what kind you order. Thank You.
I have been buying my sugar through an Amish Bulk Food store near my hometown; however, we recently moved and that isn’t feasible anymore. My next batch will come from Azure Standard (http://www.azurestandard.com) I buy Raw Organic sugar. The brand from the bulk food store is Florida crystals. I’m not sure what the brand is through azure. I also buy some Sucanat as well, but cannot justify the price very often.
Enjoyed your post. I wrote on this subject last year and said much of the same things. I struggled with the guilt thing for a time. At one point I wondered what I would do with the 20 pound bag of white rice someone had given me. We generally ate brown rice because it was healthier. Then I realized how foolish I was being. I was telling God that what he provided was not good enough for me. http://tashales.blogspot.com/2010/11/cooking-for-army.html
Thank you so much for #2. I struggle with guilt knowing there may be a healthier or more organic choice for my family that I cannot afford to feed them. As a nurse I am constantly preaching, I mean teaching health habits. I know a little can go along way and small choices like portion control have huge benefits and are more important than where the food came from (a box, can or fresh from a garden). I was nice to hear you say you are not ashamed and I will not be either! Thank you.