There’s a grocery store that I go to periodically, as it’s in the mall near my house where the post office and pharmacy are, so when I’m there I often pop in to top off what I need in my kitchen. They often have terrific sales, and when I was there last I was not disappointed.
When you first walked in, you saw a row of veggies, all with super low prices- this time all $0.25 per pound! I got carrots, zucchini, onion, eggplant, and cucumber at that steal pricing, and they might have also had cabbage at that price.
Then you walk a bit further in and see a shelf where everything is $1.69. I got oil, gluten free corn flakes, rice, and four packs of mini bottles of flavored seltzer all at that price. Some of those items are occasionally a little bit more than that, but many of them are also twice that price or more, like the corn flakes.
They had pasta, 4 for $2.85, or $0.71 per package, when pasta is either one and a half times or twice that price.
They had sugar 3 kilo packages for $2.85, or 95 cents each when they usually are $1.17 per kilo.
They had cherry tomatoes for $1.42 per package, when they usually are twice that.
And they had pineapples for $2.29 each, when they usually are between $4.50 and $8.
I discovered a new brand of cereal that hopefully my kids will like- I got a honey nut cheerios style one and cocoa puff type, for $3.42 when the next cheapest off brand I can find costs $4.29 when I can even find them, but usually I can only find name brand ones for $5.75-$7.00 per box, so this is a steal. As long as my kids enjoy it.
And then last but not least, right at the checkout counter I saw that if you spent more than $29 at the store you can get beef kebabs for $1.69 per package- they usually are at least twice that, if not 3 times the price. You could get a maximum of 2 packages, but that was fine.
When I got home, I made a quick supper of zucchini soup and kebabs which cost me about $4.00 for the meal, which was awesome.
But there was one problem.
Finding room to put away the groceries has been a problem. You see, my stockpile of groceries that I keep in my pantry under my stairs and in my kitchen is full to bursting. I see things on sale and I feel like I can’t let the sale pass me by, so I buy it, and fill up my pantry more and more, until there’s no room to put anything else in it. So then things stay on my counter in my kitchen since there’s no room to put it away.
My freezer isn’t much better.
I decided that I’m going to do a pantry challenge. Only going to buy fresh produce, dairy, and bread, but everything else I’m going to try to use up from my pantry before I buy anything else. This will be a drop challenging, since part of the reason my pantry is staying stuffed is because I’m using more produce and fresh items because of trying to eat more healthily, but I have healthy and diet friendly items in my pantry that I can use up as well (like some of my millions of cans of tuna, and canned veggies, etc…) And my freezer is filled basically only with healthy items like chicken, fish, and frozen produce. So it is definitely doable. (However, I have no green beans which we love, so I have to see if I’ll “allow” myself to buy green beans despite this challenge.)
I’ll try to remember to update you about how my pantry challenge is going. Wish me luck.
Have you gotten any amazing grocery deals lately?
If you have a stockpile, do you ever run into the issue that I do, having bought so much that there’s no room for new things, but you don’t want to miss out on sales? Ideas on how to prevent this in the future?
