Hey Dad, Let's Talk 2| Save a Fortune by Buying in Bulk |
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1) A car or taxi 2) Space in your house to store large packages of dry and canned goods, such as a pantry. (No room for a pantry? Be creative: use the space under your bed or behind the couch, for example.) 3) Shop at a wholesale grocery store and a bulk foods-type store, such as Bulk Barn. No Frills, for example, has great prices, but they don’t offer much by way of bulk baking items. Here's how it's done: At your local grocery or better yet, wholesale grocery store, buy two-week’s or one-month’s worth (or more) of pasta sauce, pasta, bulk bag of rice, jam, peanut butter, cereal, and *meat. At your bulk foods store, buy two-week’s or one-month’s worth of baking supplies: flour, sugar, raisins, oats, etc. Keep your excess baking supplies in storage and for convenience, also keep a kitchen cupboard organized with easy-to-find supplies. (For example, I keep my flour in Tupperware in the kitchen cupboard, and the giant bag of excess flour in the basement pantry. I refill the Tupperware as necessary.) Anytime you find an item on sale that you normally buy (such as cheese, pasta sauce, pasta, cereal, peanut butter, oats, etc.), go ahead and buy twice or even ten times as much as you would normally buy. The more storage space you have, the more you can stock up on sales. If I find my brand of toothpaste on sale, for example, I’ll buy 4 tubes instead of 1. This will save you a ton of $$ in the long run. But don’t get caught up on the extra $$ it costs to buy 4 jars of pasta sauce instead of 1. You know you’ll use it up, and it'll simply mean you won’t have to buy it again a week later. (Again - if you lack in storage space, be creative. Use the space under your bed, behind the couch, a closet shelf, etc.) We buy a big box of mushrooms from a wholesale grocery store. It's only $7.00 and once washed and chopped up, it produces four large freezer bags of mushrooms! Compare that to the cost of a small container/brown bag of mushrooms. *Meat: Keep an eye on the fliers. You can save a fortune on meat by stocking your freezer every time there’s a good sale. Personally, however, I'm opposed to buying meat from the grocery store. Factory farms are notorious for the abuse of animals and even employees and I don't want to support that. Free-run meat from small farms can be costly but there are ways to make it work with your budget. For example, you can eat meat less often, thus evening-out the cost. My husband and I purchase 1/4 of a free-run cow from a small farm and this fills our freezer for an entire year. We get all kinds of variety of cuts for $2.50 a lb. You might think this is expensive for say, ground beef, but we also get prime rib for the same cost. This, of course, requires a big freezer. Free-run chicken from the butcher is more expensive than the grocery store, so we simply eat chicken less often. Note: To avoid running to the grocery store for convenience because none of your meat is thawed, decide the night before what you’ll have for dinner the next day. Pull the meat out at the same time you’re doing you’re supper dishes and put it in the fridge. By the following evening, it will be thawed and ready to cook. Perhaps you’re thinking, I just can’t afford to buy in bulk. It costs too much $$ upfront . . . While this is definitely true, it's only true the first time. Think about it: If you've got 4 jars of peanut butter in the pantry, it's going to be a long time before you need to buy peanut butter again. Nevertheless, to get you started, you may need to scrimp and save for a month or two until you've got about an extra $100 set aside. Then, use that $100 to do your first bulk shop! Buy double on all the sales and get several week’s worth of dry and canned goods. Fill that pantry. There's just nothing like running out of cereal and instead of going to all the effort of driving to the grocery store where you'll most certainly fill a cart with impulse purchases, you can just mosey on into the pantry and grab a box off the shelf - which - you bought on sale. It's a great feeling! :)
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(c) Bekah Ferguson - 2007 Permissions: By all means, you are welcome to reproduce and distribute my articles in excerpts or complete format as long as you don't change any of the wording. If you do reproduce any part of my articles, please include the following information: by Bekah Ferguson, Ontario, Canada. www.bekahferguson.com Licensed under Creative Commons.
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There are three main requirements for buying everything in bulk: