Vaughnshire Farm

We headed out to town on a strict frugal shopping mission and came back very pleased with our ultra-frugal results! 

Our trip to CVS trip cost us a grand total of .44 cents!  I ended up with 2 packages of diapers and two packages of pullups and a toothbrush and a bunch of Hershey’s chocolate (great for baking!).  I earned $17 back in extra bucks. 

Our trip to Kroger was also a huge success ending up with some freebies like baby wipes and our final stop to replace our blender was a huge surprise when we found a $55 blender for $13 and it has a food processor attachment.  Evidently blenders are a seasonal item, or so I was told?  Since I tend to go through a blender a year, until I can find a good commercial grade, stainless steal, non-breakable blender…the $13 blender does the job. 

Here is just a sample of some of the good finds: free soap, free huggies wipes, free Tabasco sauce and cayenne pepper sauce, .40 cent toothbrushes, .80 cent big roll viva paper towels.  We also found a beautiful .50 cent potted plant marked down from $15.  All in all, our grocery / household supplies bill this week was considerably less. 

I am beginning to see great successes in our pantry store and can contribute that to several factors:  1.)  It is amazing how much you can do by just raising your own meat, eggs and milk!   2.)   I also quit buying small bags (3 to 5 lbs) of items from the Amish and started buying the 25lb and 50lb bags from them– grain, flour, oats, sugar etc.  That really makes a difference in the long run if you can plan the extra expense of a $19 or $22 purchase for a large bag into the month.  3.)  Taking advantage of the regular stores as much as possible when I find excellent stock-up deals (using coupons and rebates) on items for our pantry store. 

Frugal Tips when shopping at a regular stores: 

• Always look for a clearance section in the store.  We found a basket full of Recharge juice, the kind I was looking to stock up on for labor and postpartum, marked down to $1 a jug.  We found the clearanced blender on a back shelf away from the other smaller regular priced appliances.
• Scan the store shelves for clearance tags and stickers hidden along side regular priced items.  We found 8 bottles of dish soap, which ended up being free after the coupons, sitting on the shelf next to the regular priced dish soap.  We also found 10 packages of baby wipes clearanced out just because they had Christmas packaging, which ended up being free after coupons. 
• Don’t forget about those little stores.  We have a small town store that ran a sale last week on toilet paper and with coupons we stocked up on some free toilet paper.  Sometimes these smaller IGA type stores run some very good sales.  Everything else may cost triple, but they will occasionally have some great loss leader sales you can take advantage of. 
• Keep a mental tally, or a calculator handy to keep up with what your total cost should be.  I got back over $10 just on yesterday’s trip as well as 3 bags of free dog food after pointing out that several items rang up higher than what the sale tag said. 

While the girls were out doing some much needed pantry stocking, the men were doing some much needed farm work of which another blog post will have to tell…

Although we were not able to find the Cottonelle and the cotton swabs–(all sold out!  I was really looking forward to stocking up! )  — We did find some unexpected deals! 

First, at CVS our totals were $7.38.  We earned $13.00 in extra bucks and saved a total of $76.29.  When I walked in the house and the boys saw the load of peanut butter I bought, my oldest offered to buy them from me.  Of course you know why, don’t you?  They use peanut butter in their traps so it is a very important tool for them to have on hand….and more importantly, it is more important to me that they have their own jar of peanut butter for obvious reasons! 

At Walgreens,  we had some need shopping to do so we spent a total of $8.51 and saved $37.88.  We used the one day only printable coupon for $5 off any order of $20 as well as a lot of other coupons.  The biggest find of the day was all the free Dawn dish soap we found.  They had it marked down to .50 cents a bottle and we used the $1 off 2 Dawn manufacturer coupons to come away with 8 bottles of free dish soap!  (It was the Dawn Botanicals, Uplifting scent, yellow with big yellow .50 cent stickers on them.  They were not in the clearance sections, they were on the shelf next to the other dish soap.  I grabbed all that were left at the store I visited and I am sure they won’t last long if other stores have them!) 

Also, for those who use real butter, they had the boxes of butter (4 sticks) on sale buy one, get one free for $3.99.  If you needed butter that’s a good deal last time I checked on butter prices. 

An amusing addition to the day was hearing an upbeat manager talk to several of his employees on jurisdictions vs. chores using the Dugger family as an example!  He asked them if any of them had seen the shows about the family with 17 children and a 7,000 square foot house.  He went on to share with them about the Duggers and how the parents train the children not to see their work as meaningless chores, but that they give the children ownership of areas of the house which they call jurisdictions.  He went on to say how brilliant that was because the children don’t just see their work as a chore, they see it as a jurisdiction for which they are responsible. 

Nice to hear as I was waiting in line

EDIT:  I stated before that the deal was good one time, however, CVS customer service told me the limit was 5 deals–meaning you would get $10 in extra bucks back on each purchase of Sambucol.  The Sambucol rebate that you would send into the company is only a one time rebate. 

That is if you can find it!  From several of the comments, the CVS stores they visited didn’t have it.  I would call before you make a trek into town (if it is a trek for you). 

Other items that are limited to 5 are the Cottonelle, the Dial 3-pks of pump hand soap, the Johnson’s packs of cotton swabs and the Johnson’s baby packs of lotion/baby wash.  All are giving back $2 ecb’s for each purchase.  Combining these with coupons and you can come out with some very great deals.  (The Johnson’s baby packs would be free after ECB’s and using the $1 off Johnson’s baby product coupons that came out not too long ago.) 

A scenario for you:

• Buy 1 Sambucol 12.99
• Buy 1 Cottonelle toilet paper 4.99
• Buy 1 Johnsons baby pack 2.99   
• Use $4 off $20 CVS coupon
• Use .50 cent cottonelle manufacturer coupon
• Use $1 off Johnson’s baby manufacturer coupon
• Pay 15.47 plus tax
• Send in $10 rebate
• Brings your total down to $5.47
• Get back $14 in Extra care bucks. 

You can see how this will add up over time.  The next deal that you do you can use your extra bucks to pay for your purchases and if you plan it right, you can continue to roll your extra bucks into more extra bucks. 

This helps pay for higher priced items like baby diapers!  I try to wait for really great deals or incentives like earning extra bucks for buying diapers ……and then I stock up on them. 

Remember my post last year on the really great cheese deal… well, it’s back at Kroger only not as good as last year.  Using the .40 cent off 2 Kraft cheese coupons —Kroger will double to .80 cents off 2 (some have reported finding $1 off 2 coupons at the store on a tear pad where the cheese is located), you can get a decent deal on some cheese.  Buying 9, getting an instant $6 off your order.  Check your area as this promotion may vary. 

That’s a short lesson on the other economy…. Tomorrow, I plan to do my end of the month/beginning of the month grocery shopping in both parallel economies:  The Amish store and CVS…

CVS has been running a great deal on Sambucol black elderberry extract.  It was a January promotion that is also going to be continued to a February promotion.  Here is the promotion:

Buy the 4 oz Sambucol Black Elderberry Extract for $12.99 and get $10 in extra care bucks back.  If you are unfamiliar with CVS, extra care bucks are basically a coupon that prints out attached to the end of your receipt that will be worth $10.  You can use this coupon to buy something else right then or use it on a later date. 

To make the deal even better, if you use the $2 of any $10 worth of non-prescription items purchased CVS coupon and then send in the $10 rebate that Sambucol is offering off the purchase of any of their products… you end up making some money off the deal and getting something that actually works great for fighting colds, runny noses, coughs, fevers and more…

Here is a printable $2 off $10 CVS coupon.  Expires 1-31-08 !!!

Here is the printable Sambucol rebate form. 

Deal breakdown:

• You buy Sambucol for $12.99
• Use the $2 off $10 printable CVS store coupon (expires 1-31-08)
• You pay $10.99 plus tax
• You get a $10 ECB (extra care buck) printed out at the end of your receipt. 
• You send in your original receipt showing item purchased to the Sambucol rebate and they send you a $10 check. 

CVS also has a lot of other great deals this week so check out Money Saving Mom and  I love CVS frugal mom websites for more info on the deals and how to do them.  I plan on taking a trip into town to stock up on some paper products (toliet paper, diapers etc.) for a great price using my $10 extra bucks from the Sambucol deal and some coupons that I have. 

FYI:  My extra care bucks did not print out for the Sambucol deal and when I called customer service about it, they said that there were some issues with the promotion that were causing these ECB’s not to be triggered.  (not in all cases-they were working on it)  She issued my coupon to my account so if this happens to you, just call them. 

Here are some highlights from my favorite trips this month: 

Trip one: 
Spent:  $11.79
Coupons and Store Savings:  $50.89

I also sent in my receipt for a $10 rebate.  So my total for this trip was $1.79! Because of this trip, I am stocked on trash bags for a long time. 

Trip two: 
Our small town grocery store ran a .10 cent sale on produce.  Each item was .10 cents and here was the breakdown:

10 grapefruit
20 oranges
20 apples
5 lemons
20 red potatoes
50 potatoes

So for a little over $12 I was able to get loads of fresh produce.  I saved over $67 that trip. Unfortunately, that produce didn’t last as long as I thought it would.  I’ve decided that we need a greenhouse in addition to a big garden.  I was reminded of a conversation I had with an older woman a while back.  She told me that while she was raising her 5 boys, she planted a 1 acre garden every year to supply enough food for them as well as provide food for canning.  I was inspired by her wisdom and reminded that this type of gardening use to be norm in our culture.

I am looking forward to dropping my grocery bill even more with gardening this spring and summer but more than a grocery bill savings, I am wanting that fresh, organic, natural, local food. 

Here is my latest super sized grocery deal for the large family.   Kroger had a product promotion sale in which the store offered an instant $7 rebate when you bought 8 Kraft / Nabisco participating products.  The only limit was that you could only get one $7 rebate per transaction when buying 8 products.  So I ended up doing multiple transactions.  After finding out that the sale was valid for an additional week,  I decided to order an additional 60 coupons from the coupon clippers website and really stock up before this sale ended.
Actually, with my coupons the Kraft cheese crumbles ended up being completely free with some overage going towards the tax.  Here are my totals:

3 visits with 21 transactions (No problems whatsoever.)

36 bars of cream cheese
24 boxes of triscuits crackers
8 boxes of cookies
100 bags (various crumbles, shredded, cube and block)
8 bags of additional cheese for free because I found the manager and asked him if he would check in the back for more crumbles because the ones on the rack were out of date.  FREE BAGS just for pointing that out to him!!

Total paid $42.61
Regular price $431.68

Some of the cheese was already in the freezer when I took this picture.  The cheese crumbles and shredded cheese freeze well.  I did find out that  cream cheese is good for 2 months past the expiration date as long as you do not open the package.  Cream cheese will freeze, however, it does alter the consistency a bit so it would not be good for spreads but still good for baking.  Though it may seem like a lot of cream cheese, I should have bought twice this amount.  If we have a breakfast with bagels, it takes two packages of bagels and 1 package of cream cheese to even start to feed us.

Last month I stocked up on 23 packages of bagels, which doesn’t last long around here.  I have to get my brain thinking in even bigger stock quantities!

Charlotte asked, “I would love to know where you get all your coupons. Do you buy any?

I do not buy papers. I get my coupons from various sources. I happened to pull up behind the newspaper man at the recycling center one day as he was unloading his truck of leftover papers and asked him for all his Sunday papers. He told me that he puts lots of Sunday papers in the newspaper recycling bin on a certain day of the week and I usually get those inserts each week.

I also can recommend The Coupon Clippers as a good resource for bulk coupons. You can not sell coupons, but you can sell your service as a coupon clipper, which is what this home schooling family does. I ordered 60 coupons, all the same coupon, to use on a big ta-do sale this week. I will update on this big deal later on in the week.

You may also ask different stores what they do with their old Sunday papers. Some stores throw away the papers, in which case you could ask to come by and pick them up. Many stores sell cheaper Sunday papers during the week. Many other stores will have the paper delivery man come by and pick up Sunday papers on Sunday night.

For our family, I need a lot of coupons. For a smaller family, I think it would be worth it to buy a paper and gather coupons from family and friends.

I try and have at least 10 copies or more of each coupon insert in order to stock a pantry and freezer.

Next, Jillan asked, “Do you think it is worthwhile for a family who is only blessed with two children (11 and 13yo boys) to sign up for a big box store membership, for groceries, etc.?”

They have great buys on many things, however, I have cut my spending at these stores by shopping grocery store sales with coupons and finding a greater savings on many items that I use to buy there every month. However, many items you just can not find anywhere else for a better deal than at Costco.

Cream, Eggs, Milk, Butter, Cheese — Costco has cream around $2 and some odd cents for a quart of cream. Grocery stores carry this for $5.xx. Costco has excellent prices on eggs, especially the good for healthier eggs. We usually get the 7 1/2 dozen large box of eggs and that equals out to about .77 cents per dozen. Good prices on milk, however store sales on milk are comparable.
Good prices on butter and unless a store has a great sale on butter, I always get butter from Costco. This month, I found it on sale at a grocery store for less than what I pay at Costco. So I stocked up. Cheese is usually a great deal at Costco, however, after this week, I don’t think I will have to buy cheese for a very long time. Getting it free at the grocery store is a better deal for me this time.
Baking items — Costco has the absolute best real vanilla extract. If you bake, you must try it. I love it! I also buy olive oil and some spices there. Occasionally olive oil is a better deal at the grocery store.

Produce — usually have great prices on produce, however, if you do not eat a lot of produce it will be hard for you to eat a package of 6 romaine lettuces before they go bad or 15 lbs of onions. Our large family finds the produce prices and quantity the best around except for a really great sale at the grocery store and family markets I buy from.

Meat — I do not buy meat at the grocery stores or Costco/Sams so I can not offer much on meat prices and quality. Except Bacon…they have the best bacon deal. I have only once found bacon cheaper.

Bread — The large bags of rolls are a good deal, however, I have not been impressed with their bread prices. I always find bread cheaper at the grocery store on sale or make my own.

Cans — I think the canned foods you have to watch out for. Many times these are not cheaper than the store. However, the larger cans are usually great buys. I do buy the large can of tomato sauce for around $2 and make homemade spaghetti sauce with it. I also buy the large can of pineapple, baked beans, black beans and chopped tomatoes.

Frozen Food — They have a lot of frozen food but I only buy the frozen veggies if I am in great need of them. Usually I stock up on frozen veggies using a grocery store sale and coupons. You will have to compare ounces and price to figure out if the big bag at Costco really is cheaper than buying several little bags. One thing I absolutely love is the Costco brand frozen cheese ravioli — great price and very good.

Other household goods — I always get cleaners, paper products, cat food, soaps, toothbrushes etc. at the grocery store on sale with a coupon for way less than Costco. I will buy trash bags there. Laundry soap is usually a good deal depending on the brand you get. The store brand is hard to beat price wise, but you can quickly figure out mathematically what your price needs to be to beat the Costco laundry soap. I stock up on laundry soap at the grocery store when it goes below my Costco price and so far I have not had to buy laundry soap at Costco.

I know many smaller families that use Costco/Sams and love it because they can buy items that last for a really long time. One box of oatmeal may last 6 months or more for you. If I did not use coupons like I do, I would definitely shop at Costco for most items. After speaking with several of my family members who use Costco, I can tell you that there is a huge difference between Costco stores. My Costco store doesn’t have near the items for the prices that my sister-in-laws Costco store has. If I had her store near me, I would be more likely to shop there more often.

One thing I will say about Costco, is that they carry a large variety of organic or whole food, natural food products for WAY less than a health food store. They also have organic coffee and organic frozen foods, organic cereals, organic peanut butter, hormone free chicken meat for very good prices.

For our family, because of my coupon deals, I am now able to get out of Costco without dropping $400 each trip. I spend way less there and buy products that I can’t get anywhere else for the price.
Can you get a pass to check out the store and compare prices and products?

I read about a lady that keeps here weekly grocery totals on her blog so that she can keep a record of her spending. Although I probably won’t pick up that habit, I thought it was a good tracking tool.

Store 1:
11 bags of cat food
10 boxes of butter
24 boxes of cream cheese
3 huge red bell peppers
5 lbs of organic carrots
8 bags of cheese
8 packages of cookies
8 boxes of crackers

Total paid: $34.95
Before Coupons: $177.04

Store 2:
11 lbs of bananas
6 boxes of tea
3 containers of sour cream

Total paid: $6.19
Before Coupons: $16.66

Store 3:
4 loaves of bread
11 boxes of tea
6 bottles of cayenne pepper liquid sauce
2 large bags of York mints
8 cans of soup
2 cans of Rumford baking powder
6 avocados
10 lbs of potatoes
Green leaf lettuces
4 boxes walnut brownie mix

Total paid: $22.63
Before Coupons: $71.39

Grocery total for this week

Total: $63.77
Before Coupons and Sales: $265.09

For those who are thinking that those items aren’t much to make a meal out of, consider that the previous weeks I purchased items that enable me to put together meals that are normal.

Previous weeks, I may have purchased apples by the bushel, or 15lbs of onions. One week recently I bought 23 packages of bagels and 8 dozen eggs (since our hens are slackers). Several months ago, I bought 30 packages of whole grain pasta that actually tastes good but am now watching for a sale because I am down to 4 packages. I haven’t bought meat since Fall because of our meat chickens and two deer (not two full ones now) in our freezer.

We have lots of salads with our meals, even if I have to pay full price on lettuce, I will use sales to determine what types of salads we are having. Last week cucumbers and tomatoes were on sale, so we had cucumbers and tomatoes in our salads. This week, red peppers are on sale, so I cut up red peppers, broccoli and crumbled feta cheese for our salad tonight. Several weeks ago, I bought a fancy feta cheese with basil and dried tomato for pennies. It lasts a long time and adds a bit of snazz to a mundane salad. A warehouse type grocery store has bulk packaged lettuce, like the romaine hearts that keep longer than a week in your refrigerator.

So my meal planning has changed a bit, I am pulling menus from what items I have in our family store and based on what items are on sale. I am finding that this is a much cheaper way to feed a large family and still maintain a bounty of healthy foods.

I started writing a book about grocery shopping and the large family in October. I have since revised the direction of the book to specifically target large families and real tangible ways to cut the grocery bill while still feeding an army and it is very close to being finished. I am so excited about this project, and have been working on it in my “free” (ha, ha) time.

If you have a question that I can address in the book regarding grocery shopping, grocery bills, feeding several to lots of children, please send me your questions.

One of my goals this year is to build a family store. Instead of buying out of need, my grocery shopping has been turned into buying items on sale to stock our family store. My shopping list every week for need items has been dramatically reduced. I do buy weekly fruits and veggies that are usually in season on sale items. There are a few items that I buy no matter the cost like avocados and bananas (lots of bananas–wish we could grow them here).

Some deals last week were:

Oatmeal: Sale was Buy One, Get One Free for $2.19. I used .50 cent coupons that were doubled to $1 off. I used two of these making the final cost of the oatmeal about .10 cents each. So I bought 20 canisters.

Black Beans were .60 cents instead of $2.39 a can. Juicy Juice was .90 cents a jug. Grapes were .99 cents a pound. Instant oatmeal was .49 cents a box. Free chili beans and free rice.

The grocery and household supplies spending for large and medium size families doesn’t have to be huge though the food and supplies are. And building a pantry for these supplies doesn’t have to be difficult. I think that moms with just a few children can benefit from learning some shopping tips as well as stocking their home with supplies and food to serve their size family adequately.

The frustration levels and stress that a mom deals with when the pantry is bare, the kids are hungry and the husband is about to walk in the door is draining. Having that area of our life prepared and taken care of lifts a huge burden.

I have started building my pantry and we have been reaping the incredible benefits of returning to the idea of “grandmother’s pantry”. I have cleaned up some shelves that now house laundry detergent, stain cleaner, toothpaste, toothbrushes, razors, shaving cream, shampoo, diapers and other household and personal supplies. The kitchen pantry is also being built with the same purpose: buy multiple quantities on sale with the goal of limiting immediate need buying.

I was reading an article about building your pantry that mentioned the old time custom of Grandmother’s Pantry. It said:

Your grandmother surely had one; your mother probably did, too. But as a contemporary cook in a contemporary home, you may not have one at all. A pantry—that is, a “room or closet, usually near a kitchen, in which food, silverware, dishes, etc. are kept,” as Webster’s puts it.

That’s a shame. Keeping a pantry is an honorable custom. Your grandmother’s pantry was likely filled with jars of fruits and vegetables, maybe even some she put up herself……

Pantry building is a foreign concept in today’s society. We are very dependent on the stores being open and readily available when ever we have a need. Most families are extremely dependant on a weekly basis. In times past, this shopping style was not common practice.

As I started to build my pantry, the first thing I realized was how incredibly vulnerable I was. Say a huge snow storm shut the town down for a couple of days or something happened on a national level, we wouldn’t eat! I ran a instant consume pantry.

Over the last few months, I have put much time and effort into building my pantry. I have my basics: pasta, rice, beans, canned tuna and chicken, oats, grain. I am adding other items and rotating my supplies as to not buy and let sit.

For example, I have been buying juice on sale over the last couple of months. I bought 6 jugs of Motts Natural Apple Juice several weeks ago. Recently, I bought 12 more on sale for about .57 cents each. I will put my new jugs in the back and move the rest of the jugs forward. The key is to rotate your supplies. Another example: I bought 20 cans of organic diced tomatoes last week. The sale was .77 cents buy one, get one free. I had ten .40 cent coupons that were doubled, allowing me to “buy” those 20 cans for free. Another one of my pantry building deals was using a $10 rebate on Delmonte canned fruit and veggies, combining that with coupons and sales to not only benefit my pantry, but saved a lot of money as well. This month I also bought 50 lbs of grain from a natural food co-op and figured out that 50 pounds isn’t going to go as far as I thought it would. I will need to adjust for this miscalculation and buy more next ordering time.

To begin Pantry Building:

Spend some time planning out what sort of pantry build you want to implement. A month? Three months? Six months?

What types of basic items do you consume and how much of it will you need? List out some basics: beans, rice, pasta, grain, flour, oats, salt, sugar, oil etc.

What types of flavor builders can you use with these foundations? canned tomatoes, canned veggies, cream soups, variety of spices, oils and vinegars, canned milk.

What types of refrigerator and freezer items do you use and need to have a stock of? butter, meat, frozen veggies, frozen fruit, condiments.

What types of household supplies will you need?

After you have developed a pantry list, you may have to take some time to pay attention to the amount used during a typical month. I have recorded several usage statistics on different items in our home. For example, I know about how long one tube of toothpaste lasts or how long it takes to use up a roll of toilet paper, a pack of diapers, a box of 4 sticks of butter, a bottle of laundry detergent etc. I use a sharpie pen and mark the date on the bottle or package or make a note of the date and from that am able to figure out how long it took to use it up. I then multiply that by how long I want to store it for and determine about how many of each I item I need.

I stock up on items when they are at their lowest price and try to stock the amount I need for the length of time I have determined, although many times it takes several weeks or months to do this. The first step is making a list.

Eventually, I want to implement several freezer building days into my work week. I have experimented with making and freezing bread dough and cookie dough with excellent results. I know it is probably my overworked mind, but I literally dream of a freezer with neatly stacked and labeled bags of homemade pizza dough, bread dough, and varieties of cookie dough.

Pantry building is one of the wonderful managerial opportunities we have as homemakers to provide for our family.