Mum-of-16 shows what it takes to feed a huge family as she picks up a ‘small’ shop of 4kg of chicken & 21 pints of milk

A MUM-of-16 has shared the ‘small’ weekly shop she did for her family – which included six loaves of bread and 21 pints of milk. 

Jeni Bonnell and husband Ray are one of Australia's biggest families, with the mum tasked with doing the food shopping and cooking for all 18 of them. 

The grandma uploaded a clip to YouTube as she shared her ‘small’ Aldi shop – which contained enough food to to feed an army. 

Jeni took one of her eldest daughters with her, as the pair whizzed round the supermarket with the mum adamant she was only going to use “one trolley”. 

But she piles it high with essentials, as she plans dinners and lunchboxes for her bumper brood. 

“My shopping trolley is filling very fast,” she tells her daughter, who’s doing her own shop. 

Jeni stacks up steaks, butter, yoghurts, fruit, vegetables and squash, as she says: “I was babysitting my grandbabies, and I didn’t watch them every second and they may have gotten in the pantry and emptied an entire bottle of cordial onto the bottom shelf of the pantry and onto the floor, so we’re one bottle of cordial down.”

The super-mum heads for the checkout, and despite it being a fraction of what she normally buys, she still shells out a whopping £178.35 ($327.48).

She says: “It may be a full trolley but to me that’s still a little shop.”


Jeni, whose kids are aged between five and 30, struggles to get all the shopping into the car, as the pair try and fit all their groceries in among car seats and Halloween decorations. 

As they pull up to the house, Jeni says: “This is the hard part of groceries, the unpacking and putting it away.”

She lays out her mammoth shop, revealing she bought 4kg of chicken drumsticks, 2kg of butter, six loaves of bread, 21 pints of milk, four bags of onion rings, four boxes of calamari rings, four packets of chicken breast, four packs of steak, 3kg of oranges and 5kg of potatoes.


She also stocked up on snacks and sweet treats, buying  20 ice creams, three boxes of chocolate pudding mix, two bags of sugar and four bottles of lemonade.

Despite buying so much chicken, Jeni says: “We brought some chicken drumsticks, that’s probably one meal for us.”

She outlines the dinners she's making for the week which include steak sandwiches and jacket potato with fish, as she plans on popping yoghurts, oranges and ham into lunchboxes. 


Jeni adds: “It’s actually quite a small shop for us, one trolley is not normally enough for all of us. 

“I spent a total of $327.48, so it is a rather small shop for us. But I think we got lots of good value there for the money spent.” 

Jeni and Ray have 16 kids including Jesse, Brooke, Claire, Natalie, Karl, Samuel, Cameron, Sabrina, Tim, Brandon, Eve, Nate, Rachel, Eric, Damian and Katelyn.

The family regularly share insights into their hectic family life on Instagram and YouTube, with Jeni saying she’s ‘blessed’ to have so many kids.

Meanwhile Jeni showed off her tower of 44 cereal boxes as she insists there’s ‘nothing wrong’ with a little stockpiling.

And she started Christmas shopping in July & gets gifts on credit to make sure she can afford them all.

Plus a thrifty mum shares easy meal planner which has saved her family-of-five £360 a month on food.

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