Watching the Groceries: First Quarter is a Wrap!

 

For the past several years, I have tracked and posted our household spending on groceries. "Groceries" in this blog means food and common household items such as toilet paper, tissues, and cleaning supplies. ("Groceries" does not mean eating out, which for us, unless we are on the road, tends to be very minimal. How minimal? Maybe three to four times in any given quarter.) I will be continuing that habit in 2026, separate and apart from the weekly Inch. 

Like all of us, I am watching prices rise, sometimes suddenly and steeply. I had to get some things for my father yesterday, and I grabbed a gallon of milk while at the grocery. The price for that gallon? $3.19.

$3.19. Just eight days ago (and maybe even more recently than that), it was $2.89, and a few weeks before that, $2.69. I have a milk tale to tell in a bit, but I was caught off guard with the new price. I am sure everyone who sets foot in a grocery store these days has similar tales to tell.

So what does our First Quarter grocery spending look like? $694.69 total, or an average of $231.60 a month for the two of us. Of that amount, $65142 was food: 94% of our total expenditures. And only because January was staggeringly low ($77.49 total) were we able to come in at an average of $232.00 per month. 

I track our spending in a simple spreadsheet, and make general notes as to what our purchases consist of. I also note victories and what I will call lost skirmishes. The last three months have held some of each.

During this quarter, there were two restocks at Aldi, one at the start of February and one at the beginning of March. The former totaled $240.48, with $213.70 being food; the latter was $110.82, with $99.61 being food. The March restock included about $30.00 of "special" soft foods—applesauce, large yogurts, cottage cheese, instant pudding, apple juice—because Warren was facing oral surgery in March and would be on a restricted diet of soft foods for two to three weeks. Even so, despite those two start-of-the-month restocks, our spending for both months were eye watering.

Sigh...and ouch. Or, as I noted on the spreadsheet after February came in at $329.61, Whoa!

I would note that we try to be good stewards and watch closely to make sure we don't waste food. I confess that the quart of cottage cheese (not a staple in this household) was a rare exception. It was shoved in the back, our of sight and mind, and the last quarter of it hit the garbage disposal when I "discovered" it and found it had turned. 

But there were some wins and some reasons to smile. With Easter coming, some of the stores dropped their prices on hams. No, we did not buy six. We bought only one. Our local Meijer (a midwest chain) had its spiral sliced ham selling for 89 cents/pound, 79 cents if you were part of the rewards program (we are), limit one. I had another $1.00 off, also as part of the rewards program, so the final cost per pound came to 69.5 cents. Okay, I'll take that.

But why only one ham this year? (Kroger also had a special on ham.) Because we reorganized BOTH of our freezers (the small upright in the basement and the fridge freezer in our kitchen) at the same time as the ham sales. I had already pulled the remaining ham from last year out to thaw. No surprise when we tackled the freezers: we had a LOT MORE of everything, from ham to chicken to corn to you-name-it, that we realized. We didn't need more ham. We needed to cut and wrap and freeze what we had, which we did over the course of two days, throwing the bones into a stock pot with pounds of beans (which, when done, also went into the freezer).

There were some other grocery wins that also made me smile. In February, I bought a large laundry detergent bottle at CVS for 30 cents, thanks to CVS bonus dollars and coupons. The topper was the gallon of milk story. At the end of March (yes, just a few days ago), milk was selling for $2.89/gallon. I noticed there was one gallon marked down to $1.30. It was nowhere near its pull date, the usual reason for a markdown. But it was the victim of a backroom hit and run with chocolate milk that had poured down over it and had apparently been discovered too late to clean up. 

It was a no brainer. The gallon container was intact; the lid had not been tampered with. $1.30? Yes! But wait, I also had a 65 cents off coupon, so the final cost was 65 cents. 

65 cents. You can't beat that with a stick.

The bargain milk. (Yes, I cleaned it up when I got home.)

I am hoping that with us once again being on top of the contents of our freezers, and turning to them and our pantry before running to the store, we can at least hold at $232.00/month, if not go lower (my hope) as we move on through 2026. 

Let's see what Second Quarter brings!