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Writer's pictureAja Lee Faassè

The Grocery Game

Updated: Oct 12

I love playing games and making little challenges and experiments in life. Learning to homestead and practicing living off grid is a fun game, my favorite one is called how old can I get my devices to last beyond their expire date? ( my current PC is almost 14 years old and my phone is an iPhone 8!!) One of the games I started over a year ago is "How can I get my grocery budget AND also eat better healthier tastier foods?" Well I am excited to share, I got it down by half of what it was, that's $400 a month per person! I could hardly believe it the first couple of months I checked to see how we did and one month we were even under!


When I was little I remember my dear mother, religiously lugging her giant super organized (with tags and everything ) coupon accordion folder to all market visits. She would only get what had. a coupon or was on sale, and if you could swing both ( remember double couple days?) well that was the holy grail. This my friends, is NOT that.


When I started to see how creative I could be with not only our grocery spending amount but also was interested in cutting out things like plastic containers, practice what it will be like to live off grid, using more and more food from the garden, less and less packaged things that are full of plastic, sugar and secret ingredients ( I mean the not fun kind of ingredients, did you know the FDA allows food makers to change the name of ingredients to anything they want? Once we catch on to something like aspartame and they notice we won't by it anymore, they just file it under a new name and keep using it. Google a popular one like "Natural Flavouring" if you dare to see what it really is! )

All this while eating our FAVORITE foods! Actually, we are eating even better than when it was double the cost! The side effect of mastering this practice is that eating out becomes a sad and disappointing affair compared to the fantastic foods and freshness level of the hacks below.

When my bonus-daughter moved out on her own, I started making easy seasonal menu planners that had her favorite dishes on them so she could save money, shop easier, and eat healthy. I had no idea It was going to help me so much, and that I would be inspired to share it, but after a few conversations with other grocery buying humans, it became clear to me we need this more than ever right now. This system has changed our lives, and anything in that realm I figure is worth sharing!


  • 🍅 Farmbox

    So what a farmbox does is a few things, Quality Food, Time Saver, Supports a system of food that we need. The biggest is the quality, if you can't grow it at home it will be that quality as if you had. Farmbox supports local farmers (which grocery stores do not, and we do not want to loose our small organic farms. They are struggling, being shut down by various bureaucratic issues, water control, and more, and we don’t want that because a grocery store tomato and a farm tomato are not the same entity, neither in taste or in nutrient level.

    So quality and supprt are there, the third is TIME and MONEY saver. We have stopped running to the store for stuff as it is delivered to the door at night when the weather is cool (as often or as little, or even skipped for vacations) and it saves money becasue less trips to store equals less impulse buys. I wish I was sponsored by Farmbox, but I am not (maybe one day!) They are just the best after 4 years of using them every week. https://www.farmfreshtoyou.com/


    🍅 Menu

    Ok, this one might seem like “whoaw hey thats too much time and energy I dont have” but I PROMISE its so so worth it. What happens with a menu is this:

    Gavin and i sit down to order the farmbox on the couch, with some cookies or tea, and put in our basket what we want to make that week for dinners and packed lunches. If were hosting, or if we will be home alot or if well be really busy and need quick things, and we go off my seasonal menu I keep on the fridge. (Working on sharing as well!) it takes about TEN minutes tops to order our food this way. 

    We now have some good stuff to look forward to, no drive to the store, no impulse buys, no waste or running out of things, we click our tea cups and close the app and go on to something more important than wrangling grocery carts, parking, wondering if its stealing to open a bag of chips while shopping, touching a million germs, and coming home with freakin pumpkin nut butter that was so expensive we have to cancel netflix to offset the cost. (insert shocked pumpkin drawing here)


    🍅 Planned Leftovers

    Ok thus is wayyyy yummier than it sounds. If one of you goes to an office, kids that go to school, whatever, someone is eating outside the house and this is where we really cut down on COSTS and boost our HEALTH. 

    Faceit, nothing is more pure than home made and on top of that it is soooo much in savings.

    Once you know how many portions a recipe makes and which ones do well the next day, (some taste even better!) you get double the portions and ingredients, invest in some good glass and silicone containers, pack it up after the dinner where you make extras on purpose and bam! Delicious, low cost, healthy lunch for tomorrow. This is actually a double time saver for the next day as well so here we’ve got points in taste, health, savings, and time saver. 


🍅 Beauty & Hygene

Ok, so this one was sort of by accident, I just wanted to use less clutter in the shower and less giant plastic bottles everywhere (tiny house!) also they leave so much product in the bottom and I loath leaving tippy bottles upside for weeks trying to finish them off.

Bar or Concentrate Shampoo - I love my hair and this stuff actually doubles as working better than all previos shampoos- the thing with bar is it has less junk in it so less ubildup on the hair, I love these bars and this concentrate (literally use like a little dot for the concentrate) It saves so much the bars last several months for 2 people!

Tooth Powder - This stuff is awesome, or the little tooth tabs, you need like the tiniest sprinkle, one tiny bottle of this tooth powder lasts several months! I also love the taste and it has way more herbs that make the oral biome healthy and non of the fillers used to just make a paste formula.

Small Batch Bar Soap -Very similar outcome as the shampoo bar, lasts wayyy longer than body wash, saves space in the shower (provided you have a soap holder that lets it dry out!) way less fillers and chemicals. I like these homemade bar soaps that dont use perfume and are full of clay and shea butter, but just find a good one and stick with that. One with ingredients that start with shea or coconut and not glycerine. I love classic greek olive soap and for savings that one lasts the longest of all the ones I have tried.


Want to save even more money time and have even better tasting, more enjoyment and fun with this? Part two of this blog is not finished yet, it will be the advanced version covering the topics below. I also hope to finish my Seasonal Menu and Shopping List soon!!!


🍅 Gardening to eat


🍅 Harvesting


🍅 Seed and Root Saving


🍅 DIY Staples

  • Milk

  • Butter

  • Condiments

  • Icecream

  • Bread

  • Snacks


🍅 DIY Beauty

  • Face Wash

  • Body Scrub

  • Body Oil


🍅 DIY Cleaning products

  • creme scrubs

  • surface sprays

  • mopping liquid

  • glass cleaner





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