10 Ways to Lower Your Grocery Bill

I feel like if you ask anyone, they would say that they feel like they spend way too much at the grocery store and I’m right in line with those people.  It’s amazing how much food costs. I hate it when I come home and look at the groceries that I bought and think I spend how much for all of this.  It’s disheartening.  But I have found some ways that make me feel not so bad about my grocery bill. 

I am not an expert on this topic but here are a few ways that I feel that I lower my grocery tab.

Warning Loooooong Post but it's full of good ideas.

How to Save Money on Groceries

1. Shopping at Aldi’s - I reached out on Facebook and I got some good advice from some other moms and started shopping at Aldi’s and man, this was game changer for my grocery shopping.    I make my grocery list and just go through the aisles trying to match up as much stuff as possible.  The eggs there are about 70 cents, 70 CENTS!!! that’s almost a dollar less than at Meijer. I also find good savings on mac n cheese and canned beans, fruits and veggies.  They also have a good deal on their salad mixes, I always feel like this are overpriced at the regular grocery store.  Wes likes to take the Cesaer Salad mix to work and I can grab those for about $1.49, thats almost $2.00 less than the big box stores.  The other thing that I really enjoy about Aldi’s is that when I’m done shopping, I feel like I got a good amount of food for the price. 

This was on Monday before I got him all dressed up and put in the oven.

2.   Whole Chickens - One way that I found out that I can stretch my grocery budget is buy making meals do double duty and one of my favorite ways to do this is with a whole chicken.  You can buy this for about $1/ lb and you can easily get a couple of meals out of them.  I bought about a 5 lb chicken for around $6. 5 lbs of chicken breasts would have costed me at least $10. I bought it at meijer instead of Aldi’s and paid 14 cents more per pound.  Later this week, I will show a couple of recipes for this whole chicken.  I roasted a chicken last night and after Wes and I eating dinner (James isnt’ a big fan of chicken yet) we still had over 1.5 lbs left.  Thats enough for 1 if not 2 more meals.  

3.   Buying only what you’ll really eat - As simple as this sounds, this one is a hard one for me.  I know that I should eat more fruits and veggies, so I buy them, don’t eat them and they go bad.  That’s just wasting food and money.  So when my budget is really tight, I buy things that I know, 100%, I will eat this week. So even though everything magazine and TV show is telling you that you should eat kale, carrots and a salad everyday, if you know, deep down, that you wont eat it, don’t buy it.  

4.  Shop the front page - I heard about this trick a couple of years ago, when you look at the ads from the store, always shop the front page.  The stores put the best deals on the front page to pull you in, they barely make any money on those items and thats where you will save some money.  Another good idea that i’ve heard about, if use those front pages to help you pick out which fruits and veggies you should buy this week.  Buying V & F when they are not on sale can really bust your budget. 

This was my shopping list last week, it was a slim budget week

5.  Go with a shopping list -  Again, the same advice but there is a reason why it works.  Not only does shopping with a list save you money, it also saves you time.  The times that I have gone sans list, those trips are super long and i’m running around the store trying to get that one piece of the meal that I forget or decided to add and the less time you spend at the store, the less money you spend.  I’m not the best at sticking with my list 100%, I alway seem something or remember something that I forgot to put on it.  Or even worse I get sucked in by a sale item and decide that I need it right now. 

6. Meal plan and leftovers -  Like the shopping list, this idea as been around for awhile but if you are struggling with your grocery budget, give it a try.  You can do it as extreme or as simple as you want.  My sister, I think she still does this, schedules out every meal breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.  I on the other hand, schedule out dinner and just wing the rest of it.  Usually for lunch, I have either leftovers or the same lunch all week long. Which one I usually end up doing all depends on Wes’ schedule that week.  On day that he’s on shift, he usually take the left overs from the next before and eats them but when he has a big break in the middle of the week, I eat leftovers because he doesn’t take a lunch to the shop with him.  If he works a lot of days during the week, I’ll make myself a special dinner and leftovers for dinner.  Doing this helps us save money and I don’t have to cook all the time, so it’s a win win. 

7.  Reuse meals -  Some weeks my meal planning doesn’t always go as planned and we either eat out, grab pizza or do something else for dinner and I’m left with a meal that I had already bought items for but haven’t used.  I’m not the best at this but why not put in your next week meal plan, it was good enough for last week.  It’s almost a free meal for that week because you have already bought it.  In the same idea,  every couple of months, why don’t forgo the shopping all together, except for essentials - milk, eggs, produce and live of your pantry and freezer for the week.  That can easily save you $50 every week you do this. 

How tempting does this coupon look

8.  Use coupons wisely -  Everyone loves a good coupon right?  A grocery store recently opened up here and they were spending out a $20 off a $100 purchase and man I was so excited.  $100 is my normal grocery budget and to get my normal amount of groceries for $80, I was one the moon.  I say that I got about 6 of these coupons and then they stopped but by that time I was already into the store and kept shopping there and my grocery bill grower larger and larger. But thats when I reached out and found Aldi’s and I haven’t been back since.  The coupons were amazing while they lasted but I need to find something else.   

I feel like we get stuck in this idea that all coupons are good even if it requires us to buy more or items that we wouldn’t normally use.  $5 off a freezer sweeper, thats a good deal but I already have one.  So I’m not really saving there.  My advice on coupons is to make your shopping list and then find coupons that match it, not the other way around.  

Pioneer Woman Picture and Recipe - delicious 

9. Homemade -  Another way to lower your grocery budget to try to make as much stuff homemade as you could but also be wise to know when it would cost more.  Snack bars are one of the things that doesn’t cost too much to make at home but can really add to your grocery budget.  There are plenty of recipes online but I like the pioneer woman one,  I a lot of the ingredients are items you probably already have at home, if not, you can always customize them to the stuff you do have and it makes a lot in one batch.  

Like I mentioned above the biggest thing with homemade it to know when you are saving money or when it’s costing you more.  I got a bread machine for christmas and this thing is great, I’ve made bread (of course), pizza dough and pretzels with this thing.  But right now, making homemade bread and pizza dough costs more than it would to just buy it at the store.  I can buy a frozen pizza on sale for $4, it would cost me more than double to buy all the things to make it at home.  Making pizza and bread at home is healthier and does taste better but for the purpose it’s serving right now, cost wins out. 

This is not my current garden by a long shot, had to go back to 2013 to get this picture

10.  Grow a garden - What to have access to pretty much free vegetables all year long, grow a garden.  I haven’t started on my garden yet and we didn’t grow one last year (I didn’t have a lot of free time last year in the summer with a newborn on all and I’m pretty sensitive to plants so I can’t go in and get to the weeds without breaking out so I have to wait for Wes to clear it out).  You can also can your fruits on your labor and enjoy them all year long. 

Those are the tips that I have for saving on the grocery bill.  I hope these will help you with your grocery shopping and make you feel like you are getting your money’s worth. 

What do you do to keep your grocery bill manageable?

Do you find yourself spending more in the winter or the summer?  

- Megan

Little Changes, Big Pay Out.

Hi Everyone,  sorry for the lack of posts last week.  We celebrated James First Birthday (his birthday is on Wednesday) this weekend and prepping for the party kind of took over my life last week.  

But I’m back at it.  This week and next I’m gonna be blogging about ways that I have found that I can save money with grocery shopping, home items and baby stuff.  Also I will cover James’ birthday party and everything that I did for that.  So it’s gonna be a busy couple of weeks here at the blog, so lets get at it. 

I will preface these blogs with the fact that I am far from an expert on this topics.  There are still a lot of ways that I can be better in the topics overall but these are just ways that I have done to save money.

How to Save Money at Home

This is not my picture or recipe for the detergent. 

1. DIY Laundry Detergent (here is the recipe and link)-  This idea as been around and all over Pinterest for a long time and honestly I never really gave much thought to it until I started losing about 10% of my grocery budget to my laundry detergent at least once a month  and it always seemed like I was running out and needed to go the store to get more.  I did have some reservation about making my own detergent, Wes, when he was younger, had a allegoric reaction to powder detergent and I wasn’t sure if he still reacted this way or if James would be the same.  Luckily my sister has been making her own detergent for awhile and bought my some over a year ago as a thank you gift.  So I was able to test it out on our clothes before investing into it.  Once I saw that we were in the clear, no reactions, I went out and bought all the ingredients for the detergent.  

 Savings -  Buying all the ingredients plus the bucket and lid costed my about $33 in all.     This will get me about 250 loads. I do about 4 loads a week so this should last me over a year.   With buying a similar liquid version at the store, 64 loads at 100 oz, I would have to buy 4 containers at $12 a piece for a total of $48.  Yearly savings, $15 and not running out in the middle of laundry day. 

Again, not my picture or box. Right now we have lemon scented. 

2. Powder Dishwasher - This one isn’t a DIY, there are DIY ones out there and maybe I will tip my toe into that but now I just buy the stuff from the store.  I made the switch from tablets to just straight powder a couple of months ago,  again this was another thing that I felt was eating up my grocery budget and always buying so I looked for a cheaper option.  I felt like I was paying for the convenience of the pod.  I already add the blue liquid stuff to the dishwasher and do a little prewashing already so I thought why not try the powder.  

Savings - I can get about 57 (1.3 oz) dishwashing loads from a 4.5 lbs box for $6 or buy $15 for 67 pods. I will take that $9 savings. I do have pretty hard water so I use a little more. You could get 75 loads if you only use an oz.   I say we do about two loads a week, mostly when James is out of dishes, so one big box will get us about 2 months.  So yearly savings would be $54.

Pulled this from the internet but it's how I feel about bill pay. 

3. Bill Pay-  I picked this habit when I was working at the bank. We live in a world that we have many ways to pay our bills - going directly to the place, writing a check, paying through their online website or bill pay.  I prefer to pay my bills through bill pay and here is why and how it says me money.  When using bill pay versus paying directly on the website, I don’t have to remember a ton of different passwords and usernames and log into a lot of different sites.  All I have to do is log into my bank account and select which bills that I would like to pay.  I also don’t have to pay for the checks or the stamps to send out the payment.  That saves me time and money since I don't’ have to run out to the post office to get stamps. Once I sent submit, I don’t have to worry about it. One more thing that nice about using the bill pay is that it’s safer for you because when you put your payments out in your mailbox, especially overnight, with the red flag saying, ‘hey, I’ve got mail’. It’s a way for bad people to get your account number and your personal information. 

Savings - I send out about an average of 6 checks a month, $.47 cents a stamp plus $.10 for the check (that a rough guess) = $.57 or $3.42 a month or $41.04 a year.  

4.  Using the dishwasher over the sink to clean dishes - This one was a hard one for me to get used to partly because Wes and I went without a dishwashing for such a long time, like almost 3 years.  But you use less water by not hand washing all the dishes and that leads to savings in your utilities bill. 

Savings - I’m not sure on the exact number on it because there are some many things to fracture into it.  But I do know that I don’t go through dishwashing soap as fast so that more money into my pocket. 

Our local library, isn't she pretty. 

5. Visiting the library -  We are very lucky to live less than a mile from the local library. And while I go in spurts from checking out books from the library and I know it has saved me tons of money.  I have probably checked out at least 14 audio books from the library and many more real books.  When Wes and I were first looking into the idea of homesteading and having chickens, I went to the library and checked out a ton of books. Some were really informative, some not so much.  Thats where I very thankful for the library, I always hated it when I bought a book and didn’t like it or couldn’t get into it.  With the library, there is nothing lost and I just return it for someone else to love.  One of the things that I really like about this library is their hold system, I can place a book on hold and in a couple of days it will be ready for me to pick up, I just go to the front of the library, grab it and check it out.  

Savings - Audiobooks are about $20 to buy and I’ve checked out 14 of the them, so I savings from $280.  And as far as real books, nonfiction and informational, I would say that number is close to 30 or so if not more.  Again, those cost at least $20 so thats another $600.  So using the library, it has saved me about $900.  Of course, this isn’t in a course of one year but I’m wouldn’t be surprised that with James getting older, we may hit that soon. If i divide $600 by 3 years, about the time that I’ve been using the library, thats about $200 a year. 

So just by making these little changes I am able to save about $300 a year.  I am actually surprised by this number, I knew it saved me money but I never knew that much.  The one that surprised me the most was the dishwashing detergent, $54 extra bucks and it's still named brand too.  So long tablets. 

What do you do around the house to save you money?

Is there anything that you couldn't give up even if it would save you money?

Later this week, I will go over how a couple of adjustments to my grocery shopping has saved me money.  

-Megan

Chocolate Chip Cookie Search Take 1

In honor of National Chocolate Chip Day yesterday, I thought I would write about my first take in the search to find the perfect chocolate chip recipe. So my plan is to write about a different chocolate chip recipe every week or so.  So this challenge means a couple of different things 1) I will be eating a lot chocolate chip cookies in the near future 2) Wes, the other fireman and surround neighbors and relatives will be eating a lot of chocolate chip cookies and 3) I believe I will find the perfect cookie by the end of this challenge. 

Not my cookies but I will probably try this recipe out

I guess I should explain what I think the perfect chocolate chip cookie should be.  Not only does it have to taste good (duh) but I also like my cookies to have a little height (appearance), stay together with dunked into a glass of milk, and come off the paper sheet easily. So I will be judging this cookies on those 4 categories plus affordability.  I hate it when you try a new recipe and it has you buying tons of items that you will never use again.  

So the first recipe that I made for this challenge was the classic tollhouse recipe.  I found this recipe to the tee except for the amount of time in the oven, I didn’t want burnt cookies. 

I’m not gonna spend too much time going over this recipe or the making of the cookies because almost everyone has made this cookies.  Given that, your result may be different from mine so bear with me. 

all the ingredients laid out so pretty

The recipe called for:

2 1/4 cups of all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 large eggs

2 cups (12 oz pad.) Nestle Toll House Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels

mixing it all together

I mixed the flour, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl.  Normally I just add them when it’s time to add the flour and just let the mixer do the work but this time I wanted to follow the directions exactly.  I let the butter soften to room temperature then I add the sugars.  I mixed until they were combined then add one egg at a time, then the vanilla extract. 

adding the chips

I accidentally got some vanilla on me and I smelled like vanilla for the rest of the day, it was really nice and relaxing. It makes me want to buy some vanilla shampoo and body wash and lotion. But back to baking, I added the flour mixture and the chocolate chips.  

flat but still delicious cookies

I scooped out 24 cookies. I normally use a small ice cream scoop but I must have scooped one too many cookies because the scoop broke and I haven’t gotten a new one yet.  I went old school and did the two spoon technique.  I baked these cookies for 8 minutes and left them on the pan for about 3 -4 minutes.  

hard to get off the pan and hard to clean up after. 

These cookies always seem to come out flat and the chocolate chips seem to be like little mountains in the cookies.  And they were a pain to get off the pan. 

I put the rest of the dough in the fridge for the second part of this Tollhouse experiment.  A lot of the recipes out there recommend you cooling the dough before cooking to reset the butter, especially if you can’t went for the butter to reach room temperature and you microwave it.  I meant to only have the dough in the fridge for a couple of hours but James was sick and required a lot of cuddling and attention. So the cookie making got put on the back burner until dinner when I was preheating the oven anyway.  

To be honest, I had higher hopes for this cooler dough but sadly it turned out exactly like the first go round. They turned out flat cookies with chip mountains. Maybe I need to get fresher baking soda.  Don’t get me wrong, the cookies tasted great and they were nice and soft on the inside but getting of the pan was terrible and you loose the bottom of the cookie when you have to scrap them off.  

So here are my reviews for the TollHouse Recipe

Room Temperature 

Taste - 5

Appearance - 1 

Dunk-ability - 2 (they stayed together but since the bottom were pretty much removed when removing of the pan, there wasn’t a lot to keep them together) 

Removability - 1 

Affordability - 5 

Cooled Dough

Taste - 5

Appearance - 1

Dunk-ability - 2 (same issues as above)

Removability - 1

Affordability - 5

I was hoping for a little different of a result between Room Temp and Cooled.  Maybe it’s my baking soda or something other technique that I’m not doing right.  But overall, I was a little disappointed by the TollHouse recipe but thats why I’m on this search. 

How do your cookies turn out?

What’s your go to chocolate chip cookie recipe?

How do you like your cookies?

Under The Weather

Over the weekend James developed a cold.  It was his first cold.  I understand how lucky I am that he made it 11 months without a cold.  But since we made it 11 months without a cold, I was greatly unprepared.  

This is James 11 month photo.  I didn't take any pictures of him when he was sick.
But here is a recent photo. 

I could tell something was up on friday night after James went to sleep.  Besides a ‘I don’t have anymore paci’ eposide, I don't usually hear too much from him.  But over the monitor I heard some coughing and he was stirring quite a bit.  He would cough, wake himself up and look for a paci, this was happening about every 30 minutes or so. I talked to Wes on the phone (he was working at the station that night) and I told him what was up and he suggested that he might have a cold.  I thought that he might have had some food stuck in his throat.  He had peanut butter bread for dinner and he loves to stuff it in.  So I was a little nervous about the coughing. 

So this waking up and cough thing went on for about 2 hours and while I was rocking him to sleep.  Side note, while I love that he is sleeping through the night (95%) of the time and puts himself to sleep, at least night, so when I do get the chance to go in and do a little nighttime rocking, I jump at the chance.  I look at him, asleep in my arms and think about how big he as gotten and where my little baby went.  When he had been asleep for awhile, the idea dawned on me to set up his humidifier.  The little boy was so tired that when I placed him in his crib, he didn’t even really wake up as I was moving stuff around and setting it up.  The humidifier worked and he sleep pretty well that night. 

Saturday morning when James woke up you could tell that it was indeed a cold. When he was 3 months old, I was obsessed with getting things for when he’d have his first cold.  But we didn’t really have to extra money and he didn’t get a cold until now, so I never went out and got things that he might need.  So I did a little pinteresting and found out what some other mom’s recommended.  It’s funny, the blogs that I found said make sure you get this stuff now, so you don’t have to run out at 2 am to get it.  It’s wasn’t 2 am when I ventured out to get it but it was rainy and 9 am. Minus the running nose, James was a super cute trooper at the store.  We managed to go to the store and back within about 30 minutes.  

Saturday was a rough day,  he seemed to feel fine when he was moving and playing.  He ate fine and wasn’t any fussier than normal.  Sleeping is where we had our problem.  James likes to sleep with pacifiers but he was having a hard time breathing through his nose because of the cold and I had time breathing through his mouth because of the paci.  The first nap wasn’t very long but the second nap of the day was a little better.  

Another not sick picture but it pretty much recaps our napping. 

We got to cuddle together on the couch and take a little nap.  He kept waking up and I had to soothe him back to sleep by gently smoothing his hair.  I could have sat there and did that for hours.  

Saturday night wasn’t very good.  A lot of wakes up and even one nursing session (something that hasn’t happened in a few months). Sunday he was getting better, the nose wasn’t as running and the napping was better.  I still took the opportunity to hold him the whole second nap.  I was only going to hold him for a little bit but I couldn’t put him back down.  

Sunday was better and Monday he seemed like he is on the mend.

So that is the recap of James’ first cold. I know everyone was dying to hear about it. 

Here are the products that helped me get through it.  

Crane Elephant Humidifier - This was running full blast at night.  When I walked in James’ room Monday morning it was like a fog had rolled in. You do want to make sure that you empty this daily and disinfect it weekly because mold and gross stuff can grow quickly and thats the last thing you want for your sick baby.   It's super easy to disinfect, all you need is water and vinegar.  I looked up the manual online and there is even youtube videos that walk you through it. 

Nosefrida - This item is the new thing is baby colds and snot removal. It’s a long tube with a red piece on one side, which goes in your mouth, and a larger tube on the other side.  The larger blue tube you place in the baby’s nose and suck  It’s a little weird to use at first and I wish it came with another set of hands. Holding the blue tube on the baby’s nose with one hand and holding now his arms with the other, it left me without a hand to hold his hand still.  Maybe Swedish baby (it comes from Sweden) are more relaxed than James is. 

Boogie Mist or saline mist - this product is great for helping dried up nostrils. It is also nice to use before the nosefrida so get everything ready to be suctioned. 

Boogie Wipes - These wipes are extra soft and have extra great at getting all the snot in the .02 seconds you have to wipe it away before your baby jerks his head away.

Vicks Baby Rub - This product is awesome.  I put it on James’ chest before he went to sleep.  I think it helped open up his nose a little bit.  I do wish I would have gotten the outlet plug in kind so it could have been working all night long. 

Soothing Vapor Bath -  This bubble bath should be in everyone home.  Not only does it produce great bubbles for bath time, it also releases this vapor into the air that helps relax and clear up baby’s nose and chest.  It also left James’ skin nice and soft too.  I will warn you, this bubble bath does make the bath a little slippery. 

So those are the six things that helped us make it through James’ first cold.  I did find this super cute basket in my house that I was able to put all these products in (minus the bath stuff) and carry it around with us when he decide that he needed to get into every room that I allow him to get into. I think I’m gonna make this my go-to baby gift from now on.  Sure there is a ton of cute things to get babies but when your baby is sick and you don’t have everything and you have to make the trip to the store at 2 am or 9 am in the raining like I did, you don’t feel to good about it as a parent.

What are your most haves for your sick baby? 

When your baby first got sick, were you prepared or did you make a last minute run to the drug store?

- Megan