One mum has discovered a genius hack to save money on her food shop whilst making sure the family doesn’t get bored eating the same meals all the time – here’s how she manages it
One mum swears by using lolly sticks to cut her food bill down and plan her family meals in advance.
Billie Hoey was tired of feeling like she was ‘stuck in a rut’ when it came to dinner time, moaning that she’d always fall back on ‘boring’ dishes that never excited the family. Her fiance Adam would resort to fajitas ‘without fail’ – which can get a little repetitive after a while. The woman, in her 20s, was struck with inspiration after discovering a Pinterest post designed to encourage little ones to complete their chores.
All the jobs like cleaning their room and putting their toys away would be written on a wooden lolly stick. Each day the kid would have to select a random stick to find out what their chore would be. But Billie decided to use the hack for her food shops, and has never looked back.
Billie bought some sticks back in 2022 and the couple jotted down all their favourite, budget-friendly meals, and now select seven at a time to form the menu for the week ahead. They have built up an impressive collection of about 40 different meals and continue to add to the pile, with the ingredients needed for each written on the back to make it easier to pull the shopping list together.
She says it has stopped them buying unneeded food that is “inevitably thrown away before being eaten”. Now, the family saves up to £40 on their weekly food shop and don’t end up on a constant cycle of fajitas.
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Billie told LatestDeals: “Before we discovered the idea, I was spending around £50-70 a week on food shopping and afterwards it reduced to £30-50. It’s a really flexible way to approach meal planning and if your head is easily turned by impulse buys it can help you to save quite a bit of money. We both love to cook and try new recipes, but we work long hours in our full-time jobs so we can’t spend ages cooking during the week.
“We were forever ending up with the same quick meals, which does get boring pretty quickly. Having the lolly sticks takes the decision-making element out of the mix. Plus, it reminds us of some of the meals we had enjoyed in the past but forgotten about.”
A version of this article was first published on September 22, 2022.
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