Couple with 13 children say they spend £3,000 a month on food alone
Alexis Brett, 43, has 11 boys and two girls, aged 20 to five months, with her husband Davie, a train driver, in Dingwall, Scotland.
A couple with 13 children have revealed how they spend £3,000 on food each month.
Alexis Brett, 43, has 11 boys and two girls, aged 20 to five months, with her husband Davie, a train driver.
The large family share a five-bedroom home in the town of Dingwall in Scotland.
The couple say their monthly household bill reaches £5,650, about £3,000 of which is spent on food alone.
Alexis says they spend £15 a day on just crisps.
Their monthly energy bills are about £750, while £500 goes on rent, £300 on travel and £600 on new clothes and shoes.
Alexis vacuums their home four times a day and deals with a mountain of washing and drying.
Her daily routine begins at 5.30am and finishes at 11.30pm.
The couple say they love having a big family but have vowed not to have any more children.
They are parents to Campbell, 20, Harrison, 19, Corey, 17, Lachlan, 14, Brodie, 12, Brahn, 11, Hunter, nine, Mack, eight, Blake, six, Rothagaidh, five, Cameron, four, Orran, one, and Scarlet, five months.
The family can easily spend £120 on a daily top-up shop in Tesco and go through seven litres of milk, three loaves of bread, one giant box of cereal and two multipacks of crisps each day.
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Their clothes are cleaned in a 14kg washing machine which still gets used three times a day, while the family's two tumble dryers are spinning four times every 24 hours.
Alexis, who plans to return to work as a gym instructor soon, said: "We've said no more children for a long time now and then another one just comes along.
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"I think this time we have to mean it though, we're at capacity.
"We've had to buy triple bunk beds so everyone has somewhere to sleep.
"And we've shelled out for two huge corner sofas so we can all sit down at once."
Alexis says she refuses to allow the children to wear hand-me-downs, making sure the younger kids all have new clothes and shoes.
The couple say they don't claim any benefits, relying on Davie's career as a train driver and Alexis's part-time work to pay their bills, as Britain continues to grapple with a cost of living crisis.
"Things have got significantly tighter with the cost of living rising," she said.
"Every penny that comes into the house goes out again, but we do try to be careful with our money.
"We don't really have a lot of meals out, I tend to batch cook big meals like spaghetti bolognese, and we don't do big family holidays."
Davie spends at least £300 a month on petrol driving the children around in their Land Rover.
Alexis said: "Once you hit about five children, you really don't notice the extra ones. There's just a lot of people everywhere and a lot of noise.
"We have to be quite regimented about things like homework - we come in from school and they all sit down and get on with it, and they're pretty good at putting themselves to bed too.
"Luckily, we've been blessed with good sleepers, so we do usually get a full night's sleep.
"We wouldn't change it for the world."