My Weekly Grocery Haul

 I thought I would switch up a bit and share one of my grocery hauls with you all. I do not like to pay full price for anything. If there's a coupon to use, I'm going to use it. I like to get the most bang for my buck, especially now, with how grocery prices are running.

In today's haul, I bought 3 different brands of yogurt.

I've also been cooking for the crew at Cloud 9 Nine farms. The consensus is that they like it. I bought 3 cake mixes and 3 frostings that will work perfectly for desserts when I make lunch.

I bought a lot of zucchini. I plan on making zucchini relish to can up in the next few days. My plant is not producing yet and I'm not sure if it actually will or not.

This watermelon weighs in at over 15-1/2 pounds. This goes to Cloud 9 tomorrow for everyone to enjoy.

This is a 10 pound bag of juicing carrots. We're not going to juice them, however. These get set out for the deer and the rabbits.

Here are the cake mixes that coincide with the frostings.
I will take a bit of help from a boxed mix from time to time.

We eat a lot of chicken. I find that getting boneless skinless chicken breasts from the meat counter and having them package them up in pairs works out great for a quick dinner.

Sorry for the blur. Bob wanted some chocolate chip cookies, so he grabbed Chips Ahoy.

These are a new flavor of Chobani that I'm curious to try. They are raspberry-lemonade. We picked up some deli potato salad to go with our burgers tonight and I got my weekly ration of bananas. I eat one a day. The potassium helps with leg cramps. I don't like bananas at all. I love the flavor, but the texture is not my favorite.

Here's the run down of what I bought:

3 boxes Betty Crocker cake mix. These were 99 cents each if you bought 5 or more.

3 containers Betty Crocker frosting. These were part of the 99 cents deal along with the cake mixes. We're not sure if we could only get 5 at this price or if we got one of the frostings that wasn't part of the deal, but one of them cost $1.99.

Chips Ahoy cookies. These were 2/$7. It's overpriced junk, but Bob likes them, so whatever.

8 Yoplait yogurts. I downloaded a digital coupon onto my loyalty card. These were 27 cents each, with a limit of 8. I limited out on them.

2 Chobani yogurts. These were $1.49 each. If I would have bought a few more, I could have gotten for like 79 cents each, but I don't want that many yogurts hanging around. They have a tendency to get overlooked and go bad.

2 Icelandic skyr yogurts. These were on sale for $1.29 each. I had a coupon for $1 off of 2. That made these 79 cents each.

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts. These were $3.99 per pound at the meat counter. I prefer to buy them there because I've been stung too many times by that woody chicken breast stuff when I buy them in the value sized packages.

1.63 pounds of bananas. These are 65 cents per pound.

3.57 pounds of zucchini. These are 1.49 per pound.

10 pound bag of juicing carrots. The tag on the shelf said that these were $7.99. They rang up for $5.99.

15.69 pound watermelon. I downloaded a digital coupon onto my loyalty card. Any watermelon but the personal sized ones were 19 cents per pound. There was a limit of 1.

Deli deviled egg potato salad. I think this was like $3.69 per pound. We paid $4.65 for it.

I had a $1 off 2 Icelandic skyr yogurt coupon
I had a $3 off a purchase of $3 or more coupon
I had a $10 off $10 worth of produce coupon

My grand total walking out the door was $31.46. This is enough groceries to get the 2 of us through the week and I was able to stock up on some frivolous sweet items for future use.

That is how I shop for my household.
What about you? Do you have a budget? Do you shop weekly, every 2 weeks or monthly? Let me know in the comments below.

Stocking Up On A Year's Worth Of Laundry Detergent

 I do not like going into stores. They are crowded. People don't respect personal space. I just have no love lost if I don't go into a grocery store again.

I do, however, like to stock up on items so that we are not constantly running to the store. I stock up on a lot of food items, but I don't stockpile them, if that makes sense.

I will mini-stockpile non-perishables that we use. I just did a toothpaste stock up today. I have enough Crest toothpaste to last me for a couple of years and I paid 87 cents per tube. Prices are going up. Costs are going through the roof. When I find a good deal, I take advantage of it. I bought 5 pounds of a butter at $2.47 per pound. I haven't seen a better deal than that for quite some time.

I am getting off track here, though.

I'm getting my washer and dryer hooked up and I wanted to make sure I was stocked up on laundry detergent.

I jumped onto Amazon to see what I could find. I ran into what I thought was a decent deal on Ecos laundry detergent. I could buy 2 100-ounce bottles for $19.47, if I wanted to do a subscribe and save. I always opt in to subscribe and save because it's a way to save some money on my Amazon order. I am also member of Prime. It's worth the money, for us, because we watch videos, I utilize Kindle Unlimited and we take advantage of free shipping.

I looked on Walmart's website and they just didn't have any decent deals worth mentioning, which is surprising because that is where I tend to find overall lower prices on cleaning supplies.

I jumped onto Fred Meyer's (Kroger) website and I found 75-ounce bottles of Purex Free & Clear laundry detergent, regularly $5.19, on sale for $4.99. There was also a coupon.

Here's what I viewed on Amazon. 200 loads of Ecos laundry detergent for $19.47, if I do subscribe and save. I don't look at the cost per ounce when I do these deals. It doesn't pertain to anything. I'm just trying to get the most bang for my buck. The less money that I have to pay out to a retailer, the happier I am about things.

Here's what I viewed on Fred Meyer's website. $4.99 for 57 loads. I was thinking at this time that I would be able to get a few more loads for a $20 bill if I bought these.

I looked at the coupon that was an option to use on the Fred Meyer Purex detergent. It states that I get $2.50 off of $4.99 (sale price), which brings each bottle of this particular size of detergent down to $2.49. Better still, I was able to use this coupon up to 5 times in a single transaction.

Some quick calculation and I placed my order for pickup this afternoon. I held my breath that they had them in stock.

So, I multiplied 57 x 5. That equals 285 loads. 5 bottles of this, using a $2.50 coupon on each one, is a total of $12.45. This versus 200 loads for $19,47. As far as I'm concerned, they are comparable detergents. I've never used Ecos brand, but I've definitely used Purex.

So, we got home a little while ago with my 5 75-ounce bottles of Purex laundry detergent that will definitely last me a year or more.
I'm good to do and we'll have clean clothes and I won't need to run to the store for laundry detergent unless I find another deal like this.


***I am not compensated by any of the companies or products mentioned above.

Meal Planning & Budgeting

 I thought I would try a bit of a different type of blog post today. I wanted to show you all how I go about meal planning, how I budget and how I shop for groceries each week.

What I do is allot us $100 per week for groceries and necessities. Necessities are things like shampoo, dish soap, laundry soap, toothpaste, etc. Whatever I don't use out of that $100, I roll it over to the following week. I try to buy a few items each week that will stock us up so that we don't have to buy that product for quite some time, like toothpaste, razors or shampoo. I did a toothpaste stock-up about 3 years ago and I still don't need to buy it. We just recently ran out of shampoo, so we did a minor stock-up yesterday at Rite-Aid. I watch sales. I read the ads. I figure out how to get the most bang for my buck. I like walking out of the store with 5 bags full of stuff and paying only $35 for it all. I find this to be one challenge that I'm always up for.

The very first thing I do is figure out a menu. I try to utilize what I have on hand, for the most part, but I usually do have to purchase chicken. We eat a ton of chicken.

Here's what my meal plan for next week looks like. I went heavy on the chicken to compensate the heavy ground beef menu that I have for this week.

My two main supermarkets are Safeway and Fred Meyer. I do the majority of shopping there because they both offer online grocery shopping and grocery pickup. I got used to grocery shopping this way. It's economical and it's easy to comparison shop with 4 different stores at the same time (Safeway, Fred Meyer, Walmart and Amazon).

First, I figure out what even sounds like it would be tasty. I generally just go with the main dish when I do these meal plans. Side dishes are easy enough and I have a fully stocked pantry, which includes many types of rice, pasta, etc. I always have potatoes on hand, as well. If worse came to worse, I can forage a nutritious veggie side dish out of my yard. I don't worry about those things. Side dishes are not written in stone and are subject to change, depending on what we feel like and what we can find. While I figure out what we'd like, I'm also jotting down what I will need from the store and any good deals that particular store has going on. I plan my meals between Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesdays are when I get an online sneak preview of Wednesday's sales items for Fred Meyer and Safeway. Wednesday is when I finalize what we will be dining on and that is when I start adding items into my grocery carts.
I usually purchase my groceries every Saturday for pickup on Sunday. However, Safeway has their $5 Friday specials, so I will venture into the store on those days to get the best deal, if it is something that I need. If it's just a bunch of bakery goods and chips on $5 Friday, I skip it. If it's $5 per pound good ground beef, I'll drop $25 stocking up on it. This Friday, they have 5 for $5 bags of shredded lettuce and shredded cabbage. I'll pick up 3-5 bags of the shredded cabbage because I can put it into my Ninja and blitz it up into small pieces that can be frozen and added into soups and stews and I have yet another stock up item that cost $5 or less and it will last for several months in my freezer. On my list, you'll see grocery items with an S that's circled. That simply means that those items are cheaper at Safeway this week, like half gallons of milk for 97 cents. I'll buy the limit of 4 of those because I'll be making my own yogurt.

Granted, a lot of this produce will not be purchased once my garden produces, but, for right now, I have to purchase it.
If you notice up at the top, I have tabs open for Fred Meyer, Safeway, Walmart and Amazon. It's super easy to go between them all and see where I will find the best deal. I do not buy anything fresh from Amazon. We don't have that option available to us. 

I leave specific instructions on how I'd like to have them pick out my produce. The way that I figure it is that these people are taking my place in the store, so it's up to them to shop as I would. It's my responsibility to be very precise on how I like to pick stuff out. 

I feel that if I'm not this precise with my special instructions, I wind up with half green oranges, like what happened last week when I was in too much of a hurry to specify that I like my oranges to be all orange all over.

I also opt to not substitute some of the items. I do not want low fat or fat free cottage cheese or sour cream. That's just my personal preference. Everyone has their own.

Anyhow, my grocery total this week, before they weight the chicken thighs, celery, chicken breast, etc. is approximately $85. It will, most likely, be a lower amount, but when I'm estimating, I'd rather estimate and budget for too much than have to scramble to take the money from another part of our monthly budget. That $85 amount is also before I figure in digital coupons I have added or the free dozen of eggs that Fred Meyer has.

So, in a nutshell, I budget $100 per week for the 2 of us. I make it a game/challenge to come in as low as I possibly can and spend as little as I can each week. I shop the sales. I comparison shop. I always find at least 2 or 3 items to stockpile a bit of. This week, it's rennet (for making cheese), pectin (for making jam) and cabbage to put in the freezer for meals another time.
Most of all, I make shopping fun because I can do this in my PJ's and I don't ever have to leave home. I can have Bob pick up the grocery order(s) whenever he's got something scheduled out in that area of town. We do not make special trips. We bunch errands, etc. up to maximize our gas. Washington state gas is close to $5 per gallon.

If you're interested in how someone else likes to save money, be sure to check out my friend, Patrick's blog, Southern Dreams Homestead. He's got great tips and tricks. Make sure to give Southern Dreams Homestead a follow, too.

Let me know if you found any of this information useful in the comments below or if you even like these types of blog posts.
Peace!