Monthly Shopping Goals: March 2015

Well, the pantry is slowly being restocked between my 25.00 a week I've been putting aside, a 200.00 trip to Costco on Valentine's Day (where my husband and I got rice, sugar and some other essentials with a part of our tax refund) and just generally working on stocking up on things in my regular grocery budget from week to week as I ran into sales.  So, instead of doing a 25.00 breakdown per week like I have been, instead I think I'm going to switch to monthly goals on what I need to build up food stores around here as I'm hoping to start reducing my grocery bill to 100.00 a week instead of 150.00 a week around here soon just to see if I can do it and to save very needed money.  And hopefully it might give you some inspiration to help out in your building up of food stores too.

So, here are my monthly goals (some vague, some specific) on what I need in the way of food.

Bulk Stores:

Food:

I want to get some #10 cans of tomato products, at least, from the bulk stores to use in different applications and just because it's a good thing to have around for food storage.  I didn't realize that tomato products were so cheap this way until recently and am thrilled to find them as when I can things like salsa...a #10 can goes a long way to making salsa easier.  Not to mention other recipes (which I'll share at later date).

Get more cans of canned crab and shrimp to use in salads and fondue and such (Three Bears is the cheapest place I've found to buy these canned around here).

Get more chicken stock (I use it all the time and I like the Kirkland Brand of stock as it is the most allergy friendly).  I'm hoping to make more chicken stock and freeze it, but freezer space is kind of limited with meat and apples at the moment, so I'm thinking buying boxes might be the best option.

Get a big container of Hershey's baking cocoa.

Bath and Cleaning Supplies:

Get a couple more bottles of the cheap Windex, Lysol and dish soap.

Regular Stores:

Hoping for another sale at Carrs for cooking oil as I would like to get at least another bottle of it.  I hate to keep too much around as it does go rancid, but at the same time if I make fried chicken it blows through the cooking oil relatively fast.  If that fails, I want to get a thing of cooking fat from Three Bears.

I am hoping for a sale on laundry soap as well.  I went to Fred Meyer for their laundry soap sale today and wasn't happy that the stuff I normally buy for 6.00 on sale at Carrs was 9.99 for the same bottle and the huge bottles that were on sale didn't include the type I normally buy.  Here's hoping there's another sale on that.

Also hoping for a good sale on cat litter again just to add a few more boxes to my stockpile.  If you can find these on 5.00 Friday be sure to look for peelies (peel off coupons) on the cat litter.  I was able to score a box for 3.50 last 5.00 special!

Amazon.com:

I am budgeting out for a Subscribe and Save order in the middle of the month.  So far I have toilet paper, drinking chocolate (a more concentrated form of hot chocolate that my husband and I like because it takes a lot less chocolate to make a mug of hot chocolate and is also safe for my son from peanut cross contamination) and oats on order.  Other than that I will try to shop for around and see if I can find some good deals on there as if you order 5 items you save 15% versus 5% (I haven't got Prime yet). 

Other Online Sources:

I put together an order today for 3 lbs of nut free butterscotch chips from Vermont Nut Free Chocolates.  Sadly, three pounds of butterscotch chips cost me 25.00 after shipping, but these are one of the few foods my son will eat for positive reinforcers at school, so it was a necessary purchase.

So, there you have it folks.  My "here's hoping I can get this stuff" list for the month.  Do you have anything you want to get for your pantry this month?