Category Archives: groceries

A New ‘Normal’

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Yesterday had the most beautiful sunrise…

I’m so glad I’m an early bird and get to see sunrises like this.

Today is the end of my third week working from home and DH’s fifth week. We seem to have passed that initial, anxious/fearful stage and are settling in to a new kind of of ‘normal’. It helps that in our town there have been no new cases for almost three weeks. We’ve all been told we will be working from home until the end of May.

This week we’ve settled into some better routines. We walk everyday at 6.30am, stop for morning tea at 10 and lunch at 12. After my work day ends I go out and work in the garden for about half an hour. Dinner is at 6.30.

I don’t want to use the big supermarkets in town as they are too busy. So we get a Hello Fresh delivery most weeks which gives us three main meals and several meals of leftovers for $120. Aside from that we eat out of the pantry & freezer.

About every 7-10 days  we collect the mail and pick up a few staples like milk, bread, eggs & meat at the corner store on the next block, its about 10 minutes inside the store and thats our only time out apart from our daily walk. The shop assistants all wear gloves which are changed between each customer and theres usually only a few people there when we go. When we get home we wipe over all our groceries before putting them away, change our clothes and wash our hands.

I’m coping well with not going out and I’m honestly not missing anything. I feel less stressed and am sleeping much better. I think DH & DD are missing the social interactions and just being able to go out and do things. But we’re all adapting OK to this new way of doing things.

Yesterday was payday and after paying the bills, and putting extra money in the offset accounts I paid our regular mortgage payment and everything extra off the mortgage. Our mortgage balance is now $96,977. 

Interesting times!

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How quickly things change. Watching the coronavirus spread around the world and seeing different peoples, and countries, reactions feels a bit surreal.

Here in Australia we’re getting a slow response from government, much too slow and confusing, conflicting messages.

I’d be happy to go into lockdown but unless the whole family does it there is not much point. DD and I both have illnesses that make us more susceptible so its quite a worrying time. I am really hoping that our workplaces shut down soon.

Last week I had two days off work with a cough and cold. I had been to a meeting where someone later had to be isolated for possible exposure. Fortunately their test came back negative. We’re going into the cold and flu season here so its that time of year when everyone starts coughing and sneezing.

A friend of ours flew to the US yesterday. They don’t seem to worried but l think he’s really taking a big risk and have told DH he will have to stop socialising for while with him when he returns.

We had done some extra shopping to top up our stockpile. There is no toilet paper in the shops, people were shopping in masks and gloves. Rice, flour, pasta, tissues, baby wipes and paper towel, mince meat, are all limited to two items.  This morning I’ve heard that some supermarkets are now cancelling online shopping order deliveries. I’m glad that keeping a well stocked pantry is just routine here.

Financially- I moved some money and bought $5,000 of VAS for $64.30 ( An Aussie index EFT) and will buy some VGS ( US index EFT) at some point.  I plan on continuing investing the same amount as usual.

take care everyone xx

Using up the stockpile!

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 We’ve been eating down our stockpile for a few months now and spending much less on groceries as a result. My stockpile has saved us a lot over the years. I buy items when they are on special, often half price and its a part of our working pantry. I built a big pantry storeroom when we built this house years ago. I had visions of shelves stacked with preserves and a nice big food storage. We used to have our own fruit trees and a vegetable garden but that has gone by the wayside in last 5-10 years.

I’ve kept my pantry full and costs down through smart grocery shopping  over the years, knowing when items come on special and stocking up enough to last till next time. I refuse to pay full price when I can get things way cheaper just with a little planning ahead.  I use a different coloured sticker for each calendar year and every item that went in the pantry got a sticker. That made it easy to rotate foods. But I realised earlier this year that its time to cut way back so we’ve already eaten through a fair bit of what we had.

I took these photos this morning of what is left of our stockpile. I’ve made a list so I can focus on meal planning around using up whats left before we go on holidays. And I’m going blog my meals so I can keep myself focused.

 There is also some food still left in the freezer and what is in the fridge.  This is going my big challenge for the next five weeks – to see how I can use up these foods. I’m not someone who likes to cook much or menu plan and I need to just suck it up and do it anyway as it will help us save money.

The plan is to get the freezer and pantry as empty as possible before we go on holidays then when we get back I can clean out and declutter the rest of the pantry/storeroom and then plan what we need to stock up on and how much is reasonable for us to keep now.

So I’m going to create a new page for this challenge and get myself out of this funk I’ve been in for the last week. I kicked it off with having a box of pumpkin soup from the pantry for breakfast this morning. Its snowing out of town here and really cold after a beautiful sunny 18C day yesterday – a good day to menu plan!