Tales of the Budget Beast and Pantry Monster

The words bulk foods and large families are sort of naturally inclusive concepts. If you have a bulk of children your are going through mountains of food. Adding to the frustration is the time required to shop for such a large family and taking into consideration the massive vehicles we drive, it's a costly venture to run all around town hunting down the best bargain. A godly man I know recently joked to me that his children were eating through their college tuition. Most large families tend to live more frugally than average folks, but with rising gas prices the cost of groceries has become an enormous concern for all families. Unless you are blessed to live on enough acreage to grow considerable amounts of food, the cost of groceries is something you can't avoid. Throw health consciousness into this quandary and you could quite easily spend your life centered around trying to keep everybody feed without sending the bank account into the red!

The Chief and I knew we had to get off the hamster wheel when it came to feeding our family, as a homeschooling mom I didn't have to time to shop during the week, and our weekends were to precious to waste on shopping. So we decided to stock up! Big time! Gone are the quaint canisters that once graced my pantry shelves. They have been replaced by 5 gallon buckets from US Plastics and self dispensing boxes of canned veggies, and what a lovely sight it is! My husband and sons also fixed up some shelving in the stairwell that leads down stairs to our finished basement. It is amazing how much those shelves can hold. We also claimed a coat closet for a second pantry, because as every mom of large family knows, normal coat closets are useless for a family this size anyway. The key to bulk storage and shopping monthly/quarterly is planning, planning, planning! Not only do you need to devise a storage plan, you need to create a master shopping list to keep an itemized list of everything you buy. My Master Shopping List  is a color coded spreadsheet, little frustrates me more than having to run out to the store because I forgot something! Finally train your children to work the system, mark your shelves, buckets, even your fridge drawers, and teach them were things go.

The end result? I shop for bulk foods: wheat grains, rice, beans, rolled oats, sucuanat, etc. once a quarter. There is a wonderful bulk foods market an hour or so south of us that has a petting zoo and lovely little bookstore, we visit this store as a family fun day quarterly. The gentleman who manages the Yoders Country Market, was kind enough to inform us that he places his orders on Friday, so we call ahead and make sure he has the goods we need. We shop at Costco once a month as a family. Costco is a warehouse type store, it costs to join, but they sell many organic items like peanut butter, jam, agave, meats, milk, and some healthy and hygeine items that are paraben/sulfate free, these purchases save us much more money that we spend. We also get a percentage back at the end of the year based on the membership we selected. That leaves us with stopping in Aldi Food Market weekly on our way back from the Chiropractor, for fresh produce and any other bits like milk or eggs. Aldi's eggs and milk are not organic, but they are produced without growth hormones or antibiotics, or so the label says.

A few ending comments, Us Plastics is run by a christian gentleman who sent me a hand written note a week after my order, and included gospel booklet with my order.  I don't know about you, but that just warms my heart, and the Chief and I like keeping our money in the family.You may also snag some buckets for free if you ask around town at bakeries, etc. Due to concerns over food sensitivities we have and leeching plastics we choose to buy new buckets. A word about coupons, due to the fact that we buy the majority of our food from places that don't accept coupons, it pretty much a moot point. I do find online coupons for the few name brand items I buy or seasonal items. I have tallied the cost of our grocery bill and it is on par with the national average, considering that our family is nearly three times the size of the national average (3.14  according to the latest census), I'd say that's quite the bargain...