Stockpiling has saved me a TON of money. If you don't do it...give it a try. Just find a corner to pile your stuff and start watching the sales. Shelves are nice but not necessary. I remember reading in the Tightwad Gazette once...Would you rent out the space under your bed for $30 a month? Who wouldn't? Well, if you put food under there that you got a great deal on that is essentially what you are doing. Most of us here in WI are fortunate enough to have basements so maybe you won't even have to put a bunch of stuff under your bed!
Think you don't have room in your budget to stockpile? Think again. The little bit you save this week can be used to save more next week....until you rarely pay full price for the things you use the most. (Like rolling ECBs!) If you already stockpile a little bit (toothpaste anyone?), branch out to other products to save even more.
I've talked about this before but since this is a good time of year to buy certain sale items I thought it might be a good reminder. Keep an eye out for sales on baking supplies, spices, and turkeys(!) in the next few weeks. Buy enough to last you until next year at this time. You'll love pulling out items instead of adding them to your shopping list. And come this time next year if prices have gone up (and they will!) you be using items bought at this year's (lower) prices!
Below is a picture of some of my current stockpile. I didn't pay full price for any of these items and some I got for free.
6 comments:
WOW - nice! Can you spell out what is in all those buckets on your shelves - the big ones and the little ones?????
Okay - now the other question I have is what is on the shelf under the crate holding the Cascade? I can't make it out.
If you click on the picture that will enlarge it some to see better.
The little buckets have various beans, rice, pasta, grains, and flours that I bought in bulk from my now defunct co-op. The big tin has spaghetti noodles. The big buckets have wheat and rye berries.
The shelves also hold a lot of my kitchen overflow items. So below the Cascade I have table cloths, some of my Christmas dishes, and some odds and ends (Crystal Light).
I need to get a few more buckets. I just picked up some additional wheat this weekend. I usually get the big buckets at Uncle Mike's Bakery for $1.
I have just a couple canned items down there right now. I have most of my canned goods in the pantry in the kitchen. It is quite deep so I have enough room.
If I find a good deal on canned veggies (it's that time of year!) I will probably move the big buckets off the shelf to make room.
If anyone needs ice cream buckets to store stuff in let me know...I have a bunch of them. We like ice cream. :)
Okay - clicking on the picture helped a lot - now, what is in the big white box on the bottom shelf? Hope I'm not being too nosey - just curious to see where I can improve. Storing rice in an ice cream pail is a great idea :) I have a container that holds one small bag of rice with pour spout.
Okay Nosey...just kidding...in the white box is an antique tea set and several other "fancy" dishes I got from my grandma that I never use and should get rid of but just can't part with for some strange reason. How is that for a run on sentence. :)
On top of the white box is about 16 bags of chocolate and pb baking chips from that sale a few weeks ago at Cub.
Someday I would like to build some bigger, sturdier shelves along all the walls of the basement. Then I'll really get organized down there.
I could have all the grain buckets together. All the dishes together. All the water jugs together. (Being the good citizens we are we have the recommended FEMA water supply of 1 gallon per person per day. We got eight 7 gallon containers (Aquatainers-they're on sale at Fleet Farm this week) and filled them with water. But when full the jugs are HEAVY and no light weight plastic shelf could hold those!
Reading that last comment made it sound like we got all the water jugs at once. We didn't. We have had them for several years and just buy an additional one each time our family grows. Although, I did actually buy JD's this week since they were on sale.
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