There are some recipes on this site for homemade cleaners, a large bottle of vinegar costs about $1, lasts ages and cleans just about everything along with bi-carb. Check out the cleaning section and there are some posts on cleaning. I recently discovered homebrand toilet paper and I’m impressed with the quality, if you don’t use homebrand stuff already, give it a go to see what suits your family’s tastes.

For fruit and veg, try greengrocers or farmer’s markets to compare prices. It depends where you live as to whether the supermarket or greengrocer is cheaper. Here the grocer is cheaper, but where my mother lives, the supermarket is. I buy meat in bulk from the wholesaler and freeze it in individual portions about once a month. We have two (and a half) mouths to feed and we have a tiny box freezer above the fridge, it’s amazing how much we can pack in. Try your local butchers if you don’t have a wholesaler to compare prices because the supermarkets can be way over priced. Again, it depends where you live.

Another huge expense in my opinion is cereal. I nearly die when I see the price of boxed cereal. Making your own, buying homebrand, having no cereal weekends may reduce your grocery bill if you eat cereal.

Finally, a good way to find out where you personally can save on the groceries is to track exactly what you’re spending your money on. I wrote a bit about how I do this in excel here. Tracking exactly what you spend your money on can be a real eye opener as to where you money goes. When I started I couldn’t believe how much money we were spending on bread, for example. It was our third biggest food expense after meat and veg. I could then target that expense and work out how to reduce our bread costs (we bought bread marked down at the end of the day. Now we make it. It actually costs us more to make but it’s healthier than homebrand white).

Good luck with saving for your holiday, we’re saving for a holiday too.

I discovered this website today It’s great Melissa, thanks for all the good ideas! I’m doing alot of crochet at the moment, so after reading about your knitted discloths I’ve decided I’ll crochet some and it will be one less thing to buy. You’ve got some great laundry recipes too. I’ll be using my broccoli stems after reading that article I feel so bad throwing them (and the mangy zucchinis and other things that get forgotten about in the back of the fridge!) out.

I buy homebrand just about everything (know what you mean, there are just some things you can’t substitute home brand for).

Normally I go to the butcher at the start of the month, the fruit and veg shop fortnightly, do one big monthly shop at Coles and then just pick up bread/milk etc as needed.

I meal plan for a month before I start my shopping – it’s a bit of work, but it saves us so much money and time in the long run.