real cost | Boise Childbirth Preparation & Women's Gatherings

Back in the times of milk and honey, a few short months ago, I did all my grocery shopping at one place – our local co-op. It felt good to support a local business and I knew where everything was. It was also very convenient to do my shopping at one store. Turns out we were paying for that convenience – a lot!

We’re going to be sending P to a great preschool in the near future, and that also costs – a lot! We want to pay down our college bills which are – a lot! We would like to save up for a better house in a nicer location, which will inevitably cost – a lot!

Looking at our budget for the last 12 months, our food costs (groceries, coffee and eating out) ranked in 1st place for most money spent. We were spending ~$1200 per month for groceries. Thats a @#$% lot!

Yes, I’m commited to eating real food and as organically as possible and I belive in paying the farmer before paying to doctor, if you know what I mean. But seriously?! Too much for us to continue that way with the goals we have in mind.

So here’s what I’m doing to lower that bill

…but still eat real food and continue to feel good about the food I feed my family.

Let go of convenience and shop at 3 different locations for optimum choice and savings: Farmer’s Market, Winco and Whole Foods (they simply have a better selection than the co-op). I’ll reserve the co-op for hard to find spices in bulk.
Limit our organic produce to the dirty dozen and take care to wash the other produce thouroughly before comsumption.
Grow food in the garden – this has yet to be determined as a viable value. We’ll check back in the fall.
Start buying produce in bulk when it’s in season and canning what we use a lot of (read tomatoes).
Post weekly grocery haul and totals on this blog.

It’s about to get real folks!

I’m going to let you in on how much I spend for exactly what I get each week at the grocery store/market. This will hopefully give you a good idea about what a real food diet costs and help me figure out where I can save more $$$.

Here are my food priorities

Continue to get high quality pastured meat, fats, eggs and dairy (it’s worth the cost)
Shop the dirty dozen for organic and get commercial produce for everything else
Utilize the bulk section of each store
Limit coffee consumption to one serving per day, my usual is two.
Continue to work towards eating out less and eating in more.