Hi again everyone! I am in the process of embroidering a million Mickey head balloons on our matching t-shirts for Disney, so I thought I would write another post for alternative money saving while I babysit my embroidery machine.
I thought it might be nice to talk about alternative ways to save money on food. Everybody has to eat after all, right? Might as well try and eat cheaper than you are used to! Eating cheaper does not mean you have to eat a lesser quality of food. In fact, in my house it means the direct opposite! We eat better tasting and more healthy food as a result of finding alternative ways to "hunt and gather". As I've mentioned before, about two years ago, my family went through about a year of extreme poverty. We weren't prepared for it as we had always been able to make things work. Add to that my getting sick, and we barely made it out of that mess. I knew we had to do something different, so I tried to figure out where I could trim the fat, so to say, and where we could do things completely different to accomplish the goal of feeding our family, having a home, etc... These alternative methods have given us the chance to turn our financial circumstances completely around. Now we have the ability to pay for wonderful vacations, pay extra on all of our bills including our mortgage, and have peace of mind. So...choose a couple pointers, are use them all. Any small change can accomplish huge savings.
How I save on food and products for our home:
1. Coupons, coupons, coupons! I know I have talked about this before in posts, but it has been the single best decision I have ever made when it comes to saving money. I often hear people say "I would like to use coupons, but I always clip them and forget them." This breaks my heart. I always say coupons are cash. Why give up your dollars when you can hand someone a piece of paper, and it takes the place of your valuable cash? I use coupons for nearly everything I purchase for our home. My favorite and most successful place that I shop at is Giant Eagle, but I realize not everyone has them in their area. I do not run to 4 different stores trying to find the best deal. I think I would spend more time and gas doing this, so I usually stick to one place for the most part. I'm not going to get into all the ins and outs on how to use coupons because with everyone being from different areas, stores will be different. However, I do suggest that if you need a way to save money, coupons are that way. As I have said before, just at Giant Eagle, every year I save over $15,000. To be successful with coupons, you need to try and match them up to a great sale.
I hate paying for TP!! So...I stock up when it is only a couple cents!
I was featured on Sistersshoppingonashoestring.com once for this haul of $500 in free groceries.
I was able to buy those groceries b/c by buying the grands and cinnamon rolls, I earned coupons for free groceries! They paid me to walk out of the store with their food! By the way, the grands and rolls freeze really well, even though the containers say not to freeze them!
2. The trick to being successful at saving money on food is to stockpile. No, I am not a doomsdayer. I don't mean for you to stock up on 40 years worth of deodorant. I do not hoard things myself. It depends on the size of your family, but I try to pay attention to how much of something my family uses in a month, and I keep no more than 6 months to a year worth of something on my shelf. The year timeframe usually applies to toilet paper since I hate paying for that. If you have a smaller family, try keeping 2-4 of something on your shelves. For instance, I keep roughly 6-8 toothpastes on my shelf for my family. That way I never have to pay full price when I start to run out. When I get low, I just watch for a deal and a great coupon. I may leave a store with 100 boxes of cereal, and people say "what are you going to do with all that cereal? Well, last week my focus was on pretzels and deodorant b/c I was getting low, and the week before it was shampoo, conditioner, kielbasa, and bread. So...in three weeks I have managed to stock up for at least 6 months on various food items and health and beauty products. I may be rambling, but my point is that it takes time and patience to build up a bit of a stockpile, but you won't have to pay full price for anything once your stash becomes varied with all kinds of things you use every day. The biggest protests to this method are time and space. I manage to find space whenever I need it, and sometimes that means being creative, but it works. I guarantee if you think about it, you could find some extra space somewhere. We all have areas of the house where we could stand to get rid of something. As for time, initially it does take time, but after you get good at it, it comes much faster and takes hardly any time at all. I am not like the people on the shows that sacrifice family time to coupon.
3. Freeze food! I was brought up freezing things that some people never consider. Bread being one thing, and milk another. I have a deep freezer and really need to buy a stand up freezer soon. Usually I will buy about ten loaves of bread for the kids at the beginning of the month and freeze them. That way I don't have to run out and waste gas because we ran out. I prefer more expensive healthy breads than the wheat I buy for the kids, so I will wait untill they are buy one get one free, then use a coupon on each one since my store just splits the cost in half. I get them for barely anything, but I will buy 20 and freeze them. I buy milk when it is cheap and freeze it. I don't find this works with soy milks and such. We use skim milk, and actually prefer the taste of it once it has been frozen. It is ice cold and fresh tasting when we thaw it. We just set it on the counter for a couple hours, then put it into the fridge when it is partially thawed. Yum. Again, it saves on gas, time, and money. Freezer meals are something I love, but don't find a lot of time for. The point of freezer meals is to do all of your cooking for a week or month, then freeze everything and pull out as needed. It is a very cost effective way to eat, and a lot of us end up eating out b/c we are too hungry and food will take too long to cook. By doing freezer meals, you eliminate that excuse. Flash freezing is another method of saving that I will talk about when we talk about gardening.
4. Pick a month to eat only what you have in the house. It is a great way to go through your food and figure out what needs to be eaten so it doesn't expire. My deep freezer is full to the brim. I need to do one of these! My mom will do this, and she refuses to buy any groceries unless absolutely necessary. It is a great way to keep yourself from overpurchasing, and to avoid having to waste food that has expired. Eat it before it expires!!!
5. Even if you don't want to spend a whole day doing freezer meals, when you cook a pot of soup or spaghetti, how hard is it to make a double portion and freeze it? It is one small way to have backup meals in your freezer for use when you are in a hurry.
6. Gardening! This is our first year doing our own garden, and it has been fun. I am posting pictures b/c I am proud of our success. If you have the time to till even a small area and plant a couple seeds, your return can be huge! We spend a lot on produce, and I am looking forward to eating from our garden and not having to spend as much on produce. We also plan to flash freeze. That is where say you have tons of green beans from the garden, and instead of putting them in a freezer bag and freezing them, you lay them all out on a cookie sheet, freeze, then put them in a freezer bag. That way they don't end up in a massive clump of green beans. You can pick out a handful because they have been individually frozen. Make sure you date your bags unless you go through them as fast as my family!!!
Here is a pic of our garden from about 1/2 way in our yard. I love seeing the veggies growing big and tall.
Tomatoes!!!
Rows of veggies!
More rows! I see corn off to the right!!!
So cute. Cabbage on the left, brussel sprouts (ew) on the right.
My broccoli is so cute! It is growing so well, and I have never seen it grow, so it is super interesting!
Pretty lettuce, cilantro, sugar snap peas, and more!
We have potatoes, squash, corn, tomatoes, peppers, jalapenos, sugar snap peas, watermelon, potatoes, cilantro, basil, oregano, raspberries, radishes, blueberries, strawberries, green beans, lettuce, broccoli, and onions I think.
7. This is a tip that carries over into saving money on utilities, but it has to do with food too. Since we just talked about gardening, lets talk about how we water our gardens. I use the hose, of course, but we also decided to use rain barrels to catch rain for use in the garden to save some money. My hubby hooks our hose up to them and waters the garden. He installed the drains himself. If you are worried about mosquitos, then you put a gold fish in the water to eat the larvae. We had one barrel my hubby used to use for drywall mud. We cleaned it out really well, and it has come in handy. The other we bought at a flea market, but we made sure that it was food grade only. We didn't want something that had housed harmful chemicals to water our veggies with!
Rain barrels!!!
8. We are going to start going to produce auctions and keeping some of the produce, and selling the rest. It is the same place a lot of stores get their produce from, so it can be a significant savings on some of the items we won't be growing in our garden.
9. The most obvious way to save is to eat out less. You all know this one. By planning meals and using some of the above tips, you can avoid spending your hard earned dollars on fast food and other restaurants.
I am feeling the need for a break, so if I think of more, I will get back to you!
We took my girls in April 2011 and then the plan was to go again in 2 years (spring 2013) then I decided I couldn't wait so we moved it to Nov 2012 (so 1 1/2 yrs inbetween) then my tax return didnt work out so we pushed it to Nov 2013 well just recently I decided that was wayyyy too long so I am going crazy budgeting and trying to save all pennies because we are going November this year!!!! haha
even with still planning the Nov. this year trip! 
