Cooking With Sale Items & A Stockpile (Pt. 1)

Julie had a brilliant suggestion:
"...post what you are making for dinner using the things you bought that week and what you use from your storage. That way people can see how effective your strategy really is."

Good question.  Complicated answer.  :)

How does it all work?  How do we save the most grocery money?  ...& preferably not raise a family solely on Ramen noodles.

We combine our stockpiled pantry items with whatever fresh ingredients are at their lowest price.

This topic will take a series of posts.  This post will discuss starting a stockpile. 
Don't worry.  It's not intimidating...actually, with a tiny bit of effort, it kinda just happens by itself!

My garage contains cans, boxes & bags of non-perishables.  It also contains a bucket of wheat (for whenever I get a bread machine), a refrigerator & 2 freezers.

It's about to contain my stockpile of shampoo, soap, toothpaste, lotion & medicine, too because my ketchup & other heat-sensitive items are about to reside in my bedroom closet.  The desert heat turns ketchup brown.  Who knew?

All of the items in my stockpile have been found at an extremely good price.  I track grocery prices each week & compile them on the Price-Tracking Spreadsheet found on the Resources page.

The photo shows most of our canned goods.  (They're on a pretty cool shelf that rotates them to help prevent anything from expiring. But, I digress...)

Each week when the grocery store circulars arrive in the mail, I list which items are at their lowest price that particular week.  Also, known as the "stock-up price" because that's when you want to stock up. 

That includes meat, produce, canned goods, cereal...whatever's at an awesome price.  (...& that I'm pretty sure my family will eat or that's cheap enough where we can donate it if they don't.)

If you can find a coupon to combine with that sales price, you're a Rock Star & should buy that item by the case!  Then, you'll have enough to last until the next time it hits the rock-bottom price.

Yes, you'll end up buying some items your unfamiliar with.  Great!  That's part of the fun!  Just do an internet search about that ingredient & it may end up being a new favorite.  Different cuts of meat & exotic produce are exciting!

The point is: Each week, only buy what's at its rock-bottom lowest price. (& anything else that's absolutely necessary, but rarely goes on sale...milk, toilet paper, etc.)

The price of each item on your list will be so good, that you can afford to buy 2-5 times MORE OF IT for the same amount of money you would have spent for it at "regular" price. 

Hence, a stockpile is born.

This applies to non-perishables as well as whatever meat & produce can be stored properly.  (We're going to start vacuum-sealing a lot of our fresh produce & then freezing it.)

Coming up next: What exactly should we stock-up on?

Comments

  1. Yeah! I am so excited to see what you have in store for us!:)

    ReplyDelete

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