A Grocery Buying Challenge

My three boys have gladly accepted a grocery buying challenge and it starts tonight!  Each of them will be given $33 to buy a week's worth of their own groceries.  I calculated what we spent this month on groceries, divided that by the number of people in our family, and then divided that by four to give us a rough idea of what it costs to feed one person in our family for a week.  This includes toiletries too, but considering it's harder to get a good deal as a single person, I decided not to deduct anything from that.

The deal is, whatever they have leftover after their week is up, they can buy anything they want.  They're practically drooling already.

The Rules

1.  You have to eat three meals a day.  "Mom, am I allowed to skip meals?"  "No!"  "I'll just fast every morning!"  "No you will not."

2.  All of the food groups must be represented.  The fruit and veggie group can't be in the form of a sauce or juice, so no.  Spaghetti sauce or the equivalent will not count.  Nice try!

3.  To be fair, this isn't a lesson on what it's like to move out on your own, so I will require them to buy one seasoning like salt and one condiment.  I don't have to buy every spice when I go shopping.

4.  If you cheat, you lose whatever money you had leftover.

5.  If you run out of money before the week is up, the challenge is over and no, I will not buy you candy. 

The Reason

Despite our pleas, threats, and lectures, food waste and complaints about what I'm making for dinner have become a large problem in our family. 

Bread bags aren't tied closed and it either dries out and/or even falls on the floor.

Children pour themselves too much milk and leave it sitting on the table to spoil or take a couple sips of a child size cup and forget about it.

Tortilla chips are left on plates to go stale simply because they didn't smother them in enough cheese.  Actually, several times recently, one son overestimated how many nachos he could eat and they went to waste in large amounts.

Cereal is spilled and left on the floor.

Produce is ignored and often not even eaten when I put it in their lunches.

Food is overeaten, making it more difficult to plan a meal of leftovers or snacks.  When heading to a potluck, I discovered my entire bag of croutons had been eaten by several of my kids.  So much for my Olive Garden style salad!

Saturday night was the final straw.  We had already been telling the kids, "Maybe we should make you buy your own groceries!"  Our daughter was flicking milk at her brother and I threatened to take it away.  He took the milk and poured it down the drain.

Game on!