At the beginning of the year I decided that I wouldn’t spend as much money on groceries and household items and use up what I already had in my house. With the exception of dairy products and meats. Plus over the summer I bought local produce from our farmers markets.
While I don’t consider myself an extreme couponer I am pretty good at saving money using coupons, buying what’s on sale and stocking up on those sales items. For example- I have not bought paper towels since March 2018. Granted my supply of paper towels are getting low so at some time I will have to buy more. For now I’m using what I have and will start looking for sales. Another thing my my hubby and I have been doing is eating foods from our freezer, pantry and cabinets. This is a good thing because I had lost track of what all we had where. Having a simple inventory sheet for each area helped for quite a while and I highly recommend using one, but I admit I got lazy and quit using them. So instead of looking on the inventory sheet we had to dig through the freezer to see what was in there. Not fun! Pantry and cabinets are more organized because when something goes in there it gets put in the right area right away. So how did I think we did at using what we had on hand- Fantastic! Not only did we save money but we used up things that were the oldest. No more finding something that expired 4 months ago. At the end of the year I ‘ll add up my receipts and compare to last year and see if I was truly successful. Even before that happens I feel that we were successful and saved our household money. Happy Saving!
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Buy only what you need not what you want. We hear that over and over but it is something that I live by. This time of year especially, my jobs slow down- from now until March of next year. So I take stock of what I already have in my pantry, freezer, refrigerator, cabinet and closets.
I f something goes on sale and it is something I need then I’ll buy at least 2 or whatever my budget always for that week. Our first priorities are to pay our bills so some weeks I may not buy anything. We don’t have a huge stockpile of food and paper products like I wish we did but we have plenty for just the 2 of us. Cooking from scratch and eating whole foods really does help to save money and tastes better too. This was a good shopping trip for stocking up on pantry items. I purchased 25 items for under $20. First stop was the Dollar General website which I clipped the digital coupons (even tho I didn't use any) , second I did a survey from my last receipt and I was emailed a coupon $2.00 off $20.00 all before leaving home. Other than coupons I had a list of items that I want to stock my pantry with, mostly canned items for longer storage. The other items like flour, sugar, brownie mix and instant potatoes will be fairly quickly. The Gold Metal AP Flour was $2.00 for 5 lbs, that's a pretty price. DG brand of sugar was $2.00 for 4 lbs as well. Since I bake a lot I try to keep those staples on hand. Canned vegetables are 2/$1.00, canned diced tomatoes are $0.70 each, Carnation Evaporated milk $1.00 and DG brand cream soups $.50 each. I'm slowly building up our pantry but that's okay because I don't always have the extra money to buy stock up items. So some weeks or months it may only be 1 or 2 items I buy or on occasion 25 items. Anyone can build up a pantry by adding a couple cans of vegetables, fruits or soups each week/month. Start with a list of items you and your family will eat, watch for sales or check different stores prices and decide how much of your food budget can go towards filling your pantry. Happy Shopping!
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AuthorHello I'm Michele & I'm the matriarch of the Leverone Family Farm. I'm a wife, a mother of 2 grown/married sons and have 4 adorable grand kids. Thrifty for more than 30 years. I love gardening, cooking and saving money. Archives
November 2021
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