Jinger Duggar Reveals ‘Insane' Cost of Stocking Family's Home With Groceries for Jim Bob and Michelle's Enormous Brood

Yahoo

2 days ago

Former "19 Kids and Counting" star Jinger Duggar has described what it was like to be raised in a household alongside 18 siblings, while looking back on the "insane" amount of money her parents, Jim Bob and Michelle, had to spend on groceries to feed their entire brood.
Jinger, 31, and her husband, Jeremy Vuolo, looked back at a very early episode of the family's 2006 TLC special, "16 Children and Moving In," which premiered two years before the family was given a permanent series on the network called "19 Kids and Counting."
The special offered one of the first glimpses into the Arkansas-based family's day-to-day lives, examining Jim Bob and Michelle's reasons for welcoming so many children, while also providing unique insight into what it's really like to raise that many kids under one roof.
During a recent episode of "The Jinger & Jeremy Podcast," the couple—who wed in 2016 and now share three children of their own—looked back on a scene from the TLC special that documented a family trip to the grocery store.
In the scene, Jim Bob and Michelle are seen escorting their children to an Aldi near their home in Springdale, with one of the children noting that "grocery shopping is a major operation" for a family of their size.
"Probably today, we will buy like 24 cans of milk, we're going to buy a case of butter which probably will have 48 in a case, and we'll stock up with frozen burritos—as many as they've got," Michelle tells the cameras. "We're going to fill up the freezer and the pantry today."
The cameras then cut to all of the children running around the store, with several of them pushing their own shopping carts filled to the brim with food and beverages.
Jim Bob then reveals that, in total, the family filled seven shopping carts, noting that the final cost of their grocery trip was $677—just under $100 per cart.
Reacting to the clip, Jeremy is left open-mouthed in shock at the amount of food the family bought, before declaring: "Imagine those prices today."
"Oh yeah, insane," Jinger responds, before her husband suggests: "That's got to be $2,000."
However, while the shopping trip might seem extraordinary to the average family, Jinger acknowledges that it was a regular part of her family's routine when she was growing up, noting: "We would easily blow through that food."
While admitting that the grocery haul was hammed up slightly for the cameras, Jinger insisted that the amount of food the family would consume was well beyond that of a more traditional brood.
"For this scene, more of us probably went to the store than usual, but typically we could get anywhere from three to four carts of food, so mom would take a couple of us to help," she recalls.
As for the checkout process, Jinger says that it was incredibly arduous, noting that they had to form something of an assembly line to get the food onto the belt.
"It always took a long time," she said. "And my mom, my sweet mother, would be like, 'It's OK. You can go in front of us. It's OK. You can go in front of us.' Because she knew that it was gonna take a minute."
Fortunately, Jim Bob took over when it came to organization of the food once they got back to their enormous compound, with Jinger explaining that he put his past experience of working at a grocery store to ensure that all of their supplies were packed away as efficiently as possible.
'When we would get home, we'd carry in all the groceries and we'd put them on the floor of the pantry,' she said. 'We would not put everything away immediately.
"It was like, all the refrigerated stuff and frozen stuff went in the freezer and fridge, but there was always a system for it. So my dad, he loved having it organized like a grocery store.'
While the groceries certainly would have taken up their fair share of storage, Jim Bob and Michelle had more than enough space inside their longtime Arkansas compound, which features multiple homes spread across a 97 acre spread of land.
The Duggars have expanded their impressive compound on multiple occasions since buying their first plot of land for $300,000 in March 2000, a deal that landed them with 20 acres on which to build a sizable dwelling for their growing brood.
Since then, they have added multiple other plots to the property, including a 29-acre parcel that they purchased in 2021 for $160,000.
Jim Bob also made a rather substantial real estate investment in April, when it was revealed that he had splashed out $1 million on a luxury new home in nearby Fayetteville, AL, which he is understood to have bought for his daughter-in-law, Anna.
The purchase of the home, which was first shared on the Duggar family fan account called "Duggar Family News," took place on April 16, according to property records. James R. Duggar—Jim Bob's given name—was listed as the representative for the buyer.
Anna is the wife of Jim Bob and Michelle's oldest child, Josh Duggar, who is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence for child pornography.
The six-bedroom, 4.5-bathroom abode is just a 16-minute drive from the Duggar family compound in Springdale—where Josh was raised alongside 18 siblings.
The property sits on a 10-acre lot and is set back from the nearest main road, ensuring plenty of privacy for its residents, which would undoubtedly be a must-have for Anna, who has avoided the public eye since her husband was sentenced to prison in May 2022.
There is also ample room at the home for Anna and Josh's seven children—Mackynzie, 15, Michael, 13, Marcus, 11, Meredith, 9, Mason, 7, Maryella, 5, and Madyson, 3—who are now being raised solely by their mother. However, reports suggest that Jim Bob and his wife, Michelle, have played a major role in their upbringing while their son is behind bars.
Meanwhile, Jinger and Jeremy have opted for a slightly smaller dwelling in which to raise their own family, snapping up a stunning Newhall, CA, abode for $1.9 million in August 2024.
The couple, who relocated to California in 2019, had previously been renting the home. Before moving to the Santa Clarita community of Newhall, the pair had been based in Los Angeles, where they bought a home for $830,000 in 2022.
That property was placed on the market for $900,000 in June 2024, just two months before they bought their rental home.
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