A Practical Walk

Hi everyone! I LOVE grocery shopping! In Africa I loved going to the outdoor market, here I love going to our nearby grocery store. This is where I get the majority of our groceries right now. Occasionally I’ll get stuff at Wal-Mart and I love to frequent a discount bargain store when I’m in that town. We also have an Aldi and an Ollie’s in a larger town that we sometimes go to.

Anyways…I thought it’d be fun to take you on a normal shopping trip and tell you the ways I try to cut costs to keep our family well-fed.

So here we go!

First of all, saving money starts before you get to the store. If you can combine errands, you’ll save gas and time. Thankfully this store isn’t far, so the amount of gas I use is minimal, but I still try to combine it with other errands if I can.

Yesterday I drove the kids to book club, then stopped at the post office to send my very first ebay sale!!!! Just a tiny-bit excited! 🙂

Then I went to the store. These three places are all within a few blocks of each other, so it makes sense to go to them all at once.

With list in hand I headed in. My lists are usually scribbled on the back on a math speeddrill…because I don’t need to keep those for school records. I had already looked at that week’s sales and coupons in the app to help me come up with a menu plan.

I usually start in the produce section. Little tip, if produce is being sold by the pound, get what’s nicest. If it’s being sold per item, look for the biggest. For example, look at the difference in these 2 avocados, but they’re each the same price.

Also check produce to find the nicest. I was about to put these tomatoes in my cart until I spotted that little dark spot. I put it back and grabbed a nicer looking one.

One of the most expensive things people eat is animal meats. Over the years we have cut way back on the amount of meat we eat. I’ll make dishes with smaller amounts of meat in them or we’ll eat completley vegetarian meals.

I also really keep an eye out for meat sales. My husband bought me a little chest freezer, so I can stock up on cheap meats.

79 cents a pound is great for chicken! I can cook these legs up into fried chicken…I mean, love me some fried chicken!

Or another method I use for all kinds of cuts of chicken is much simpler. I’ll toss the chicken in a pot or slow cooker with water, salt and pepper, and cook until the meal falls off the bones. I debone it and then have all that meat that can be used in quesadillas, chicken salad, soups, etc…

I also have all the wonderful broth I can freeze and later use in soups and gravies.

I take the chicken skins and freeze them in clumps on a cookie sheet. Once frozen I toss them into a bag and keep it in the freezer. Nacho and Bruno (our cat and dog) absolutely love these treats!

It’s good to get to know your store. For example, this store uses yellow stickers to indicate “sale” and green for “deleted” items. I was deligthed to see these peanuts with the green sticker!

Peanuts are a healthy snack to keep on hand and with with my husband doing more jobs out of town, peanuts are a great addition to his lunch box.

Then I spotted this bigger container of peanuts! And thought about how nice the container and scrw on lid would be once emptied! But after taking a look at all the ingredients in those nuts, I put it back and instead got the cashews beside it.

I don’t always pay much attention when the cashier is scanning my items, but this time I happened to notice my head of cabbage was going to cost me thirty something dollars!! I looked closer and it had been labeled “elephant garlic!” I told the cashier and he fixed it.

“I don’t even know what that is,” he said.

“I think it’s really big garlic,” I replied, “but it ain’t that big!”

This particular store has coupons on their app, so between shopping sales and coupons, I save quite a bit.

I always get a reciept so I can snap it for fetch wards and earn gift cards.

My total was: $118.99

Now when I put this into our excell money tracker, it won’t all go under groceries. I have separate categories for food, toiletries, cleaning supplies and pets.

After this it was time to go get the kids from book club.

Thanks for coming along!

I’m curious, do you shop multiple stores or just one?

Do you put all household items in one category or do you separate them?