September Monthly Grocery Budget Summary Update

I'm pretty pleased that our groceries came under my $800 target this month, in fact with almost $8 to spare! Secretly I was hoping to stick to closer to $750, but I've been using disposables for DS#2, as I haven't been able to get my cloth nappies dry with the cool weather. Also, the elastic in them are fading fast, despite me replacing the elastic in a few of them, I'm obviously a terrible sewer, and they're not absorbant anymore and they've been wicking something terrible!

With summer coming up, I'm hoping to toilet train DS#2, which will hopefully mean only purchasing the odd pack of training nappies from Aldi. DS#1 was already toilet trained by this age, and DD was virtually on her way by now, but I just need to get the patience (and time!) together to persist with it. It will save us a good $30 a month! DD is still needing training pants, despite her desire to wear undies to bed, she sleeps so deeply she doesn't get up to go to the toilet. And I'm already exhausted and haven't the energy to get up and change sheets once or twice a night (and try and get them washed and dried again for the next night!).

This is how we spent our money:
26.5% F&V (very happy about this! A much higher percentage than previous months)
19% meat (beef, fish, chicken, cold meat, including $100 put aside for a meat shop this coming month)
18.4% dairy(yoghurt, cheese, milk, eggs) - a bit higher than normal
12.4% pantry items(tinned tomatoes, tinned fruit (good in case we run out of fresh stuff), cereal (a biggy), sauces, oil, flour, yeast etc) - surprisingly low this month
8.8% health and cleaning (deoderant, pads, tampons, toilet paper, cleaning, washing powder etc) - stocked up on toilet paper and dishwashing powder this month
5.5% bread - rather high this month, bought some breadrolls - more expensive than bread, and I didn't make as much bread for the weekends as I normally would
4.5% nappies and wipes
2.8% soft drink
1.1% junk food and "treats" - glad to see this figure went down a lot this month
1% dog food

My aim for the September pay period (ending 15 October) is to again keep under the $800 mark. Probably from October, I'm going to start stocking up for our Christmas Eve celebrations. This month we're also having some IL's over for dinner which might bump a few things up a bit.