Our groceries for the 5-day Live Below the Line Challenge.
We’re participating in the Live Below The Line Challenge. We eat well, no doubt, but not amazingly well. Our grocery bill is about $110 for 5 days for 6 people, not including the fact that my husband and I often eat lunch out. So to take what is essentially about $70 for 4 of us down to $30 is a pretty significant cut. We try to eat organically and locally where we can, but as anyone who has tried that knows, it is not an inexpensive proposition.
I’m a coffee addict. This will be hard for me, and I’m banking on the free coffee that is available in my workplace to get me though some of these days.
As we were shopping, the girls asked if we could get certain things we were used to getting such as baguettes, olives, pickles, and yogurt. I explained that those items weren’t in our budget. They were fine with it, as it was only for 5 days, but we talked about the fact that this was part of the challenge: to understand what it’s like for some kids everyday to barely get enough food to survive, let alone get the foods they want or the food we are accustomed to.
We did pick a few “premium items” where the price was the same for an item on sale as the generic, but bought plenty of store brands, too. The biggest place I had a hard time was with the milk. The milk was a decent price for what we usually buy, but I wasn’t buying milk riddled with nasty hormones and antibiotics. I’d rather fail the challenge than actually make my kids (or me) drink that.
Also, we kind of lucked out because on day one of our challenge, we were surprised with snacks at the MS Walk we participated in this morning. Bagels, pizza, and granola bars were given to us before and after the walk, which definitely helped to fill my kids up. By no means incredibly healthy food, but calories. I can only imagine how much of this free food people who do live below the poverty line would have enjoyed. It may have quite literally gotten them through until the next meal.
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