On large families and frugal living...

     Having a large family means many things are done differently ~ obviously.  I know this, I live this...but for some reason some things I/we continue to do as if we were a family of say 3 or 4.  Those things have to change :)

     We store clothing the children have outgrown in large bins for use by other children (some of those clothes are on their 4th child :), we purchase good, solid homeschooling books that can be handed down, I make copies of consumable workbook pages (if allowable by copyright laws!), to save from having to re~purchase every year, we re~use and recycle what we can, and we purchase used as frequently as possible!  I took a test online once to see what kind of carbon footprint we are leaving on God's beautiful planet earth.  Believe it or not, our carbon footprint is actually LESS than the average family of 4's!!  So, we are doing something right.  But, still some changes need to be made.

      One area that truly needs to change is our grocery shopping/meal planning and prep.  Somehow our grocery bill has skyrocketed to an unacceptable amount.  I still continue to make a menu ~ that includes all 3 main meals, plus 3 snacks for the kids EVERY day.  They have to have their snacks or else they ALL end up with low blood sugar levels, which is no fun!! :)  I'm not quite sure what has happened to our bill, but I am on a mission to lower it. 

     So, I started hunting yesterday for more ways to cut back on the grocery bill.  I googled all sorts of things, but the one that brought me to a treasure was bulk cooking for large families.  That took me to an amazing womans blog entitled: bakers dozen. This woman is amazing.  She has 14 children (that she homeschools by the way :), and she feeds them on about $800.00 per month!!  I am actually devouring her blog during every free moment (which aren't many) I have ~ and LOVING it!

     This morning I am sitting here with my pen and paper out and taking notes.  I am finding this all very exciting!!  The chance to save my hardworking husband MORE money ~ YES!!!!!!!  I can do this!!  Wish me luck!! :)