Day 26 - A Month Without Groceries

September 7, 2009

Today is Labor Day and I returned home in the early afternoon. The trip was short and pretty taxing as far as sleep goes. Lots of traveling from town to town visiting family, attending services and the like. All in all, it is nice to be home. Tonight we have been invited over to a friends house for a barbecue. That is good news and bad news. The good news is that I didn't have to cook a meal right after walking in the door. The bad news is that if we keep getting invited to people's homes for dinner, it undermines the intent of the Month Without Groceries experiment. To make up for days missed due to the generosity of our friends and neighbors, I have decided we will continue the challenge to make up for the days when we had dinner elsewhere. That means our family will keep doing this challenge for a total of 34 days rather than 30 days as was originally planned. My family is going to love me for this!

A couple of weeks back, I had someone mention that I should do my shopping at warehouse stores because the prices are lower and we could save a lot of money that way. I typically do some shopping at our local Costco store, but for the most part, it is difficult to shop for a family of three in a warehouse store. I would suggest they work better for larger families or for purchasing paper products or cleaning supplies. Currently, I can think of at least two examples of package sizes too big for our family. First is the forty count box of corn dogs consuming space in our freezer and the other is a half gallon size jar of artichokes. For the corn dogs, it would have been much less expensive for me to buy a “normal” sized box at the grocery store and I wouldn't have had any go to waste. As for the artichokes, we are still working on those.

That being said, I know the warehouse stores can produce some real bargains for families both large and small. I would recommend, however, that before you purchase that gallon jug of hot sauce (or whatever food product that strikes your fancy), you ask yourself these questions:
What is the price per unit/ounce and how does that compare to the grocery? You may be surprised to find many products do not provide a discount for buying large quantities.

• Do I have coupons to use at the grocery that will bring my price per unit/ounce below the price per unit/ounce at the warehouse store? Be sure to consider coupon doubling or tripling if you have coupons to use.
• Does my family like this product enough to eat a large volume of it?
• Can my family consume this within a reasonable amount of time?
• Do I have space in my pantry, refrigerator, or freezer to accommodate this?

Don't just assume the deals are good because you are buying a large quantity. You need to do the math and decided what makes sense based on your family's eating habits and your storage options.