How I grocery shop once a month to save money on groceries
I restock my pantry once a month, and, apart from weekly raw milk runs and the occasional trip to the “dent dump”, this is all the grocery shopping I do.
I started shopping this way in 2022, after we moved 30 minutes out of town. Already a homebody, the idea of having to grocery shop every week and make the 2-hour round trip pushed me to look at other options. I wanted to stay home more. Drive less. But I also wanted to save money on groceries. We finally had a large pantry - we converted an entire bedroom of our house to become food storage - so we had space to buy in bulk. In early 2022 I started to build my stocked pantry, shop once a month, and I haven’t looked back. Now, I can’t even consider a different way of life. If it’s not in my pantry, I don’t rush to the store to buy it - I simply plan a different meal or make a substitution, saving us a lot of money.
My grocery budget waxes and wanes, but we usually spend around $200-$300 a month on pantry restocks, while setting aside $250 a month for bulk meat purchases. Meat is one of the few things we don’t buy from Azure - it’s more affordable to buy locally and we like to support local farmers. We also buy our milk locally, and fresh produce when it’s in season or we can grow it.
Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss my next post - meal planning from my pantry!
First, if you haven’t read my Building a Stocked Pantry post, you’re going to want to do that - this will make a lot more sense if you do!
Every month, throughout the month, I add items to my Azure cart. As I see that something is getting low in my pantry, I add it so that I don’t forget. (Usually when we have just a month or two left of an item - since my orders come once a month.) You don’t have to do this - if you make monthly costco runs, for example, just be sure to write things down. Azure is closest and easiest for me, so that’s what I do. My cart right now looks like this:
These are all things that I am running out of or want to buy because they are on sale. I do a combination of restocks and sale buying. Azure often has really good sales on produce. Right now their cabbage, pears, and apples are all about $1/lb - so I’m going to stock up! My hope is that all of them will last well in the fridge, but I also have plans for processing them if not. Pears can be made into pear sauce or brandied pears, apples into applesauce or pie filling, cabbage can be freeze dried or made into saurkraut.
I’m also currently running out of canning lids and cod liver oil.
Here are some of my other grocery orders.
November: $221.76
You can see some of the large items I had run out of: cheese, sour cream, cream cheese, sugar, flour, beans. I wanted to get pineapple for some of my Asian meals, and pumpkin for seasonal baking. They also had pumpkins on sale.
October: $194.20
I had quite a bit of restocking to do this month: I had run low on multiple types of pasta, carrots, ketchup, cheddar cheese, onions, dish soap. I also wanted to get some frozen veggies and avocadoes. I didn’t need things like flour or sour cream this month, because I already had them from before.
September: $279.62
I restocked pasta as well this month, but we ended up eating a lot of pasta in between September and October so when I did my October restock, I bought it in larger amounts. I got tortilla chips, planning to use them in meals. Oats needed a restock, so did apples, flour, cream cheese, honey. I already had a few containers of sour cream but I knew that wouldn’t be enough so I grabbed one. I was out of mustard and onions as well.
What about the gaps?
As you can see - if I had nothing in my pantry when I made this order, I would need to buy a lot more to get me through the month. It would be really hard to plan meals with just pasta, onions, and mustard. What about the meat, broth, vegetables, cheese, etc - all the things I’m NOT buying this month?
This is where I think the disconnect comes when I share my monthly grocery hauls. The things on your normal grocery shopping list - say, berries, lettuce, yogurt, tomatoes, loaves of bread, snacks, etc - I don’t have on mine. Why is this?
Berries, lettuce, tomatoes - these aren’t in season, so we aren’t buying them. SEE MY POST ON EATING SEASONALLY! This is really important as it greatly affects how you shop and plan meals!
Yogurt and bread, as well as other baked goods? I make that from home!
Snacks? I buy them at our local discount store - also known as a dent and dump. They sell out of date or near date foods at a huge discount.
Broth, salsa, canned tomatoes, canned corn, green beans, black beans, applesauce, jam - these are all canned goods that I can myself and have stored on my shelves so I never need to buy them. The ingredients for them, sometimes, but a lot of them can be found locally in season.
Everyone’s pantry looks different, as do everyone’s meals. We eat a decent amount of dairy heavy pasta meals, so we tend to buy dairy and pasta a lot. You may not, so your groceries look different.
But the main thing is that once you’ve built your stocked pantry, you have your own little grocery store and you’ve saved yourself time, money, and you have some additional food security. Win win win!
Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss my next post on meal planning, if you’re still curious about what meal planning looks like for us!