This was my last shopping trip in town and as I already have a pantry built up, I am able to pretty much able to shop loss leaders and top up things that need doing so only when things are on sale.. so lets look at what got brought home.. Everything was on sale between 20 to 50% off
- 3 big bags of flour to bring me back up to my 2 year mark on flour storage (kept in freezer)
- 5 Cases of Quart jars on fall sale price
- 2 flats of bottled water, on sale for 2 dollars a flat, we try and keep at least six in the house at all times, along with the larger water storage barrel and tubs, plus we have a hand pump on the back well.
- 6 box’s of Klennex-DH’s ma is coming to visit and she had to have her box’s of Klennex and I have figured out that at some point when a cold comes around, so do I, either then or I need alot more hankies, cause when sick laundry does not get kept up. So that is a years worth right there.
- 10 60 liter plastic tote’s with lids for storage stacking
- The top right box, has 8 instant coffee jars of my favorite kind- that is a years worth right there and I still had three months supply at home.
- The left box has 8 cans of canned milk It goes on sale around here about 4 times a year
- Bulk Chili powder mix that was on sale, keeping a good supply of spices in the house is very useful
- 3 pd bag of big carrots for stew making, did I really need them no, but they looked great and I was tired of working with itty bitty carrots in the garden.
- In the same week, I was able to pick up 40 pds of on sale butter, and into the freeze the box went, combined with the butter I had, that gives me a pd a week for a year, on top of the rendered lard from the last pig I butchered out.
So it does take a little while to build your pantry, first you have to figure out what you need to stock up on, what does your family eat, what meals do you make on a regular basis, what are your most common cross-overs that get used again and again, how many pds of butter do you go though a year, how many bottles of dish soap, hand soap, Laundry soup, cleaning supplies, flour, sugar, salt, etc.
Just do so much per month to start,- pick three things you know that you use all the time, then start watching your flyers, when they go on sale, buy a three or six or years supply of them, depending on your comfort zone on how far ahead you want to get, my goal is to get to a solid two year pantry with rotation ongoing.
Once you have them in the pantry, figure out your next things required and repeat, keep watching those flyers, loss leaders are the things on sale that are to bring you into the store, now the key is to get in, buy in bulk and get back out without spending extra money.
This means you have a list, a cash budget and a leeway fund of ten or twenty dollars, and you stick to it.. once you get in the habit of this, it will get easier as it goes. Short on funds, and can’t even think about buying in bulk like that yet, then go to the point of waiting for sales and buying two in place of one. It will build slower but it means that the day you are out of something, you will have a backup in place.
Now its my understanding in the USA that they take coupons alot more then they do in canada but its always a good idea to watch for coupons instore and or in the flyers and use when possable.
The is a homestead prep blog post.
Just another Day on the Farm 
What a great concept…I took stock of my pantry this morning but I know I don’t have it stocked like you do. I have a big freezer that I know I can utilize better. Thanks for the great post made me start thinking differently about my own supplies.
Thanks for stopping by and it works well in regards to building up a good size pantry but it does require you to have the room to do so. Enjoyed your post as well.
The tubs are a great idea. We’ve started using them to store bags of dried beans and other less stackable things. My co-worker also puts them in her deep freeze, labeled with the type of meat: chicken tub, beef tub, etc. That way they don’t have to dig around, just pull up the meat tub of choice.
I know that some folks don’t like that they are plastic but I find them quite useful, It does indeed help so much with things that are odd sizes or are like beans, heavy but fluid in being able to shift and move, we have tubs in the freezer as well, our butcher does not give you box’s so we stack the different lambs or meats into different box’s, it does work well to do that, also works great to keep meat, veggies and fruit in different box’s as well.
We have almost no storage space in this apt so I’m limited to what i can stock up on. Tiny fridge as well and no room foor a stand alone freezer. I need to rethink some space.
Do you really go through a pound of butter a week? You must do a lot of baking! We use about a pound a month with just the two of us but olive oil is my main fat.
Hi Callie
I don’t always go though a pd a week but its a good average, because we don’t buy anything really that is made, it means that I make all the bread, buns, cakes, muffins, cookies or crackers that we eat, add in regular cooking, the fact that we try to not eat margine, using real butter instead and it adds up quite quickly.
It’s bathroom tissue here this week, but 60 odd rolls of the nice stuff that DH feels deprived without :-). That brand of water never hits $2 here, it annoys me that such simple things can be so much more expensive ( goes off for rant to self about BC being beautiful but blimmin expensive!).
Hi Queen
Its very rare that kind of water gets down to that price either but one of my local stores has a twice a year, one, two and three dollar sale, the water was included in that sale, and we snagged a number of cases. Yes, have to agree, having been to B.C. a number of times, my dad is working in the province right now, and the prices are higher..,
Where did you get your jars on sale?
I got them on a discount at my local co-op feed store in their canning section, I did see that home hardware had them on a little bit of a sale last week but not a great price, I did get a really great sale earlier in the summer at walmart. Not been many sales so far on the jars this year, I think because more folks are canning.