SWEET SIXTEEN
Mum-of-16 needs 56 pints of a milk and spends £360 a WEEK on the food shop & it fills four trolleys
A MUM-of-16 has shared her food shopping tips as she admits she spends £360 a week on groceries - which fills four trolleys.
Tiffany and Benji Nelson, from America, are the proud parents of 16 kids, ranging from 22-years-old to five-months-old.
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Tiffany documents their hectic family life on their channel, , as she revealed what her family eats in a week - which can sometimes cost £399.
She claimed she has to shop weekly, as any more and it wouldn’t fit in their kitchen cupboards.
The mum has a clever system for ensuring she doesn’t waste any time in the supermarket, as she writes her shopping list according to the store’s layout.
Chatting in a YouTube video, she said: “I only shop for about one week’s worth of groceries because if I did two weeks I would have seriously, six carts no joke. Six carts at the grocery store.”
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Tiffany says she first goes through her cupboards and plans the week’s meals around that.
She said: “So what I do is I go backwards, I don’t start with my list. I start with what’s actually in my cupboard and then after I figure out what’s in my cupboard I’m able to complete meals based on what I have already. So it saves a little bit of money and time.
“So I go through my cupboard and I just take note of what I have. Make a list of all the different meals I want to make and I jot down a list of what I don’t have to complete those meals.
“I write the meals here so that I can remember what I was going to make.
The Nelson family
- Kenn- 22 yrs old
- Kass- 20 yrs old
- Bridger- 20 yrs old
- JourNee- 20 yrs old
- Trey- 18 yrs old
- Jaine- 16 yrs old
- LiLee- 13 yrs old
- SaiDee- 11 yrs old
- NayVee- 11 yrs old
- Luke- 10 yrs old
- PaisLee- 7 yrs old
- DeLayNee- 7 yrs old
- PresLee- 5 yrs old
- ElleCee- 5 yrs old
- Beckham- 4 yrs old
- Ledger-5 months
“Because sometimes you get a whole grocery haul home, and you’re like ‘I don’t remember what meals I was going to make’.
“So I write the meals there and I write the filler of what I don’t have in my cupboard, in a list that coordinates with the store I go to.
“So I know the fruits and veggies are in the front so I make a list of those, then I do the meats and deli because I know that’s on the side.
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“I do frozen next because I know that’s in the middle, milk and dairy is in the back in my store. So I section them so it’s a little bit easier as I’m shopping.”
Tiffany heads to the store with Kass, 20, LiLee, 13, and NayVee, 11, saying she usually brings the ‘middles’, as the little kids put extra bits in her cart, while the teenagers get ‘too bored’.
But Kass later admits: “What we do is pick out whatever we like. My mom thinks that's just what the little kids do but really I do it too.”
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This week they headed to bulk-buy store Costco, where they grabbed a pallet trolley, as Kass said: “Usually when we go to like Walmart, we get four carts.
“Our first cart is pretty full already and we have only been not even through half of the store. So we might need to get another one.”
Tiffany admitted she usually feels embarrassed going to regular supermarkets, saying: “This place is a lot less embarrassing, because everything is in bulk so a lot of people get a lot of stuff.
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“But when we go to Walmart, we have four carts, four. So whoever is with me, we’re each pushing one and pulling one.
“Everyone asks us every time, are you having a party?”
Part of their weekly shop includes a staggering 56 pints of milk, as Kass says: “So in one week we go use seven gallons of milk. Seven to eight. Seven and then a chocolate milk.”
After filling their trolley to the brim, they head to check out with the single weekly shop costing a whopping £371.39 ($464.72).
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Tiffany says: “I spent $464.76, and that’s about right we spend about £399 ($500) a week on groceries. So about £1,598 ($2,000) a month on groceries alone.”
When she’s on a tight budget, she can get down to £1,198 ($1,500) a month, but says she has to be "very shopping savvy" to get that low.
And in order to save money, she says the family only eats meat a few times a week, and usually eats less expensive sources of protein such as beans, the rest of the time.
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On her video Tiffany says “grocery shopping for a family of 18 is no joke”, adding that it’s “always a party’ at the Nelsons.
And explaining their family set-up, the Nelsons said: “We always get asked if they are all ours!!? 7 are biological and 9 are adopted!
“SO YES!! THEY ARE ALL OURS!! We sure love each one of our 16 kiddos!”
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