Thursday, January 5, 2012

A Day of Shopping

I am really interested in the way people shop, especially how you shop if you have a large family. Yes, I know we have a large family but I am often curious if I am doing it right? Can I do it differently, smarter or better? This is one of the reason that I watch TV shows about people with large families. So I thought since I haven't done a post about a day in my life in a long long time, I would share today.

Preparation- This is the most important part of the trip for me. The more prepared I am the less chance of missing something in the store. I also really dislike running to the store to pick up one item at a time. We usually will start to notice that we are running low on things, look at the calender and decide we need to make a trip to Costco. At that point, I usually place a list on the fridge to add things as I realize I need them. This list went up last Saturday. It also serves as a reminder to me to check out things that we might be running low on.  Next on the list of preparation is checking out the Costco coupons. Are there items we usually buy that I will definitely get  because there is a coupon? Because we simply can't purchase very thing at Costco I usually have a second list for Aldi or Food Lion. This week happens to be "Super Doubles" at Harris Teeter so I have spent around 2 hours gathering coupons and placing 2 separate orders for this. Matt took the kids and picked up the first list yesterday.  After discovering they did not give me credit for any of my coupons, I spent another 20 minute on the phone and decided to use up some of the value and place an order for today.  In the category, I put things like making sure the cooler is in the car as well as getting all my coupons and list in one spots so I don't forget them. We also usually take a small cooler with drinks just because someone is always thirsty.

Trip itself- We first window shopped at BabysRUs for a new car seat. We ended up purchasing one at Costco, it is a booster for Lily. Costco had a good deal on pork. Highlights of our purchase include: bag of chicken breast, 3 large pork roast ( at home I divided these into a total of 10 separate meal and froze each individually), 2 packages of pork chops ( these are divided into 2 meal each, we had one for dinner and froze the rest0 6# of hamburger ( I am planning a cooking day on Saturday, this should be 3 meals), 2 gallons of milk, 6 gallons of Apple Juice, 2 gallons of Orange juice and 7 dozen eggs. I did purchase a lot of meat today as well as staples that I have not been able to find cheaper through coupons.  We had lunch at Costco, ran over to Harris Teeter to pick up and then came home to put away everything. I did make a quick trip to Aldi for beans, rice and taco seasoning.

The End- I spent approximately half of our grocery budget this week. Just looking at the meat we purchased this should be the only large trip we make this month.  Since we don't have any plans on Saturday, I am planning to cook  that day. Items on the list included chicken for stews, beans, 2 cheeseburger pies and 2 meals of Salisbury steaks. Today alone, I was able to divide up the pork roast and pork chops. On average we have enough of both of these items for 2-3 months! So that is exciting to me!

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