How to stick to your grocery budget when you've never been able to

I don't know about you, but I can NEVER stick to a grocery list when I go shopping. I always end up adding a few things to the cart that I forgot, or some items that looked so good that I could've sworn they were whispering "buy me!!" in my ear. 

But of course, right now we're trying to spend as little cash as possible because of our debt situation. Going off-list is not a luxury we have anymore. Besides, it's easy to waste food when you buy based on wants not needs. I'm proud to report that for the first time ever we kept to our grocery list! It ended up saving us a lot of money. Normally our grocery bills are around $150 (twice a month). This time?  Drumroll please.....we got all the food below for $95. 

Bok choi, canteloupe, two cans of tuna, organic carrots, bananas, green beans, a sack of oranges, six kiwi fruit, two zuchini, a benzoate-free salad dressing (yay, no allergic reaction for me!), two packages of English muffins....

1/2 gallon ice cream, 1 gallon milk, 1 tub butter, two gallons orange juice

Two large bags of frozen veg, and a pound each of sausage, pork mince and beef mince. 

How to Stick to your Grocery List when You've Never Been Able To

1. Bring a friend or spouse and keep each other accountable. When we shop, the Chief Engineer and point out to each other the things we chose that weren't on the list and then discuss whether we need to put the item back or not. 

2. Remember why you need to stay on track. I intentionally looked at my credit card statement and my bank account balances right before I went to the store. They reminded me how not good our financial situation is right now and those feelings were fresh in my mind when I went to shop. Extra motivation to behave! You could even write your credit card balance on your list, which should remind you of your priorities while you shop. 

3. Try shopping the store backwards. When you buy the frozen stuff first it gives you reason to get out of the store in a hurry because who wants melted ice cream? There's no time to browse for foods that might be interesting -- you just have to get in, get what you need, and get out. 

4. Use alternative transportation to get to the grocery store. The times where we've biked or taken the bus to the store we've bought far less than usual because we can only buy what we can carry. Oreos and other boxes of treats we don't need don't fit in the Chief Engineer's bike panniers!

5. Check what you've already got in the freezer to avoid buying duplicates. 'Nuff said.

6. Reward yourself for sticking to the list. Sometimes I'll add a treat food to my grocery list before I go. If I end up putting something I don't need in the cart, I'm no longer allowed to get the treat food.

7. Make a list of what to get next time while you're doing your current shopping. That way you'll know that you can have that item, just not right away. It then gives you time to think about whether or not you really want that item by the time you go to the store again.  

What's grocery shopping like for you? Do you stick to a list, and how?

Refrigerator archaeology

Growing up in a hoarded house, I never knew what I was going to find in my parents' fridge. Some food would be fresh, but most of it got shoved to the back and would stay there for months or even years. Needless to say, I try to keep my fridge from looking like my hoarder parents' fridge.

Today we took stock of the fridge. This is everything that had gone bad. 

I was pretty surprised, it was a lot of food! Half of this stuff I didn't even realize was in the fridge.  

Our fridge and freezer aren't that stuffed. 

My sister-in-law had an idea about this. She's an urban farmer who tries to make sure that she wastes practically nothing. She suggested that a whiteboard could help. Each week she lists out everything in the fridge and freezer and then makes her weekly meal plan. They scratch things off the list as they use foods during the week. At the end of the week they know what has to get used first for the next week.

I figured, why not? So I made a "whiteboard" (ha!) out of an old envelope and then we planned our meals for the week. We're much less likely to buy doubles of things if we know what we already have.

We'll see if this is a habit that sticks or whether I give it up. But it would be nice to waste less food, as food in D.C. is terribly pricey. 

How do you avoid food waste?

How to avoid overbuying at warehouse club stores

Oh, Costco.

Your brilliant sodium lights beckon me into your depths…you entice me with your mountains of fruit, huge piles of discount clothes, impossibly sparkly jewelry, walls of big-screen TVs, discount Kitchen Aid mixers…

I fill my cart with my bounty. “I’ve saved so much!” is my siren song.

And then comes the $350 bill at the checkout stand.

But wait, the bitter realizations continue! How could I forget the epic battle to squeeze 100 pounds of flour into the back seat of our sedan along with all of the other extremely large groceries?

So yeah, yesterday we went to Costco, one of the huge warehouse club stores in the US. My mom would often get the name of the PetCo mixed up with Costco when she would talk about where we bought our gerbils. We always replied that if we’d gotten the gerbils at Costco, we would’ve gotten a 12-pack of 5-pound gerbils, because nothing at Costco is small or comes in a convenient number or size.

These club stores are a compulsive shopper’s dream and a frugal person’s confusion. As the daughter of someone who had no trouble buying a 15 year supply of aluminum foil, Costco is a place where I really have to work hard to replace my desire to “save money” with a desire not to overbuy or overspend. Yes, you can save money on the items you purchase compared with other stores, but it’s hard not to spend a ton of money at these places. It’s easy to end up with way more than you need. 

How do you avoid overbuying at these places? I’ve tried going in with a list and sticking to it. Inevitably a few extras sneak into our cart. We’ve tried going with a specific amount of cash, but it’s hard to tell exactly how much we’ll need.

This time, we used some other strategies. And for the first time in ages, our bi-annual trip to Costco came out under $300! Here were our weird strategies:

1.      Bring a friend. One of my neighbors joined us on our expedition since she doesn’t have a car. We knew we had a limit on space in the car. I also appreciated having someone else have a more objective view of what and how much we were purchasing. Every time we laughed about how full our carts were, it made us stop and consider whether we really needed everything in the cart. You may be able to do this with your spouse, but maybe not. It’s easier to help someone else pick the unnecessary items out of their cart than out of your own. You can also split some item with your friend.

2.      Bring a list of what you want to buy and write down prices of the items as you put them in the cart. This made me more cost-conscious. It wasn’t as painful to write down “$2.89 X 2” for two gallons of regular milk as to write “$10.59” for a 1.5 gallons of organic milk, so of course we got the regular! This will also make it easier to comparison shop at the grocery stores. It also makes it easier to focus on the amount of money that will be disappearing from your bank account, as opposed to the amount of money you’ll “save.” Remember, it’s not saving if ¾ of those super-cheap bananas rot on the counter!

3.      Bring a calculator. Periodically we’d stop and add up everything we’d put in the cart (another reason to write down prices!) As the number slowly crept up I got much more careful about what went into the cart. No surprises at the checkout stand.

4.      Have specific plans for what to do with excess perishable food. I wanted some strawberries but I knew that the box would inevitably be too large to finish. So, I talked to the Chief Engineer and planned to make strawberry jam one evening later this week. I get fresh berries for the first few days, he gets jam later in the week, and nothing gets wasted.

In all, we spent almost $267. I feel good not because of how much money I saved (though I can’t complain about 25 pounds of flour for under $8), but because we’re keeping almost $80 more in our checking account this time around and NOTHING is going to get wasted. Not to mention, EVERYTHING fit in our cabinets. That’s saving, Dad.

Grief and Clutter: You don't need to keep it just because they would've wanted you to

I lied in previous post about only having gotten a TV from Grandmom. The day before she passed away my dad sent me home with some soups from her freezer and her recipe books. Grandmom was a prize-winning cook so I wasn't going to complain. I've made enough peace with my eating disorder that I can bake and cook now without inevitably bingeing.

I finally took those four soups out of my freezer. I heated up the carrot one and tried it -- yuck! Maybe it was that it had been in the freezer since 2009, which I didn't realize until after I'd tried it.  Or maybe I just didn't like the soup. Down the drain it went.

But there were still three more soups left. I heated up another one, potato this time. It was okay. Far too salty for my taste but I ate it anyways. This was a big no-no. As part of my eating disorder treatment I was told not to eat anything I didn't really love. This is to help me get over years of only allowing myself to eat diet versions of food which I couldn't stand, but only ate because they would keep me thin. If I'm only eating what I really want to eat, I won't be eating the awful diet food while craving and then overindulging in the the good stuff that I'm "not allowed" to have. Eating a soup I didn't like was akin to eating diet food again. This was risky and could've set off a binge. I ate it anyways.

Last night I opened up the second container of carrot, vintage 2012, this time -- this one seemed better, but still not great. I had to stop. Why in the world was I going to eat something I couldn't stand?

Oh, right. Because I could hear Grandmom 1.) being insulted about me not liking something she made and 2.) being furious at me for wasting food  3.) reminding me that this was the last dish she would ever cook for me. 

Grandmom is the one in the family who gave me and my father the idea that fat is ugly, lazy, and reprehensible. Grandmom is the one who kept telling my father that he needed to get my normal-sized mother to lose weight. This kept Mom in a pattern of disordered eating for decades, and now that her eating has normalized her hoarding has gotten worse to make up for the loss of the eating-disordered behaviors. Grandmom is the one who would make oinking noises at me at family dinners and then, in the same breath, would turn to my skinny sister and tell her that she needed to eat more.

I dumped the soup down the drain.

My eating disorder voice panicked -- You're wasting food! And Grandmom's gone, you'll never get to have it again!! You have to eat it whether you want to or not!

I grabbed the fourth container and dumped that down the drain.

I kept the handwritten label from the soup and stuck it into my recipe book. Grandmom did teach me to cook and bake and helped me make my own wedding cake, which was a necessity with the Chief Engineer's and my food allergies. The good memories I have of her are, ironically, in the kitchen. The sticker is a reminder that Grandmom was a good cook and she lives on through her recipes, which will never disappear. And the last meal she ever cooked for me? Well, she didn't cook it for me specifically, and she's in the ground now, so it's not like she can actually know what I did with her soups. I have the recipe for both of the soups and I can make more, the way I want, with far less salt.

I'm doing what's right for me, and not doing what she told me. And she can never make oinking noises at me again. Woo hoo!

(The slightly more empty freezer is a plus too.)

That one on the left? I made that,
with instructions from Grandmom. I did learn
something good from her afterall. And tastier than the soup, to boot.

Food allergy awareness week... Or lifetime

In case you missed it, today concludes Food Allergy Awareness Week in the US. I find this mostly a joke for me, as it's food allergy awareness day for me all day, every day. For my entire life! Can you feel the excitement!

It used to be simple for me. We figured out pretty darn early that I was allergic to nuts. But when I got to be an adult I slowly started getting strange rashes all over that wouldn't go away. We thought it was just eczema like I mentioned in my last post, but alas, that was wishful thinking. No, I'm mildly allergic to peanuts and severely allergic to...get this....cinnamon.

When I discovered the peanut allergy I purged all of the peanut products from the house, which pretty much amounted to peanut butter cups and a couple tubs of peanut butter. The cinnamon has been harder. Cinnamon doesn't have to be labeled in the US, it can fall under the generic term "spices" or "natural flavors."

Did you know that Coca-Cola has a cinnamon derivative in it? Apparently it does. Something called cinnamic aldehyde. I'm allergic to Coke. I'm allergic to Coke?! No wonder my stomach always got super upset when I drank that, but was okay with Pepsi.

What this has meant is that we've had to purge the kitchen of anything that has "natural flavorings" or "spices" in it. We finished that process right before I started this blog, but it's still a problem. Stuff sneaks into the house. Look, a new candy I want to try! Look, a baking mix that sounds tasty! Look, a can of iced tea mix that gives me rashes that last for half a week!

I bought this huge container (it was almost 16" tall) a few weeks ago because it looked like it would make good tea. "Natural flavors" it said. But did I listen to my gut and put it back? No. It was new and exciting, like many of the useless toys I buy in my life. 

I then realized that I was suddenly getting my characteristic cinnamon rash on the days when I drank it. I kept drinking it. I couldn't bear the idea of wasting $6 worth of tea. 

Apparently even when my knuckles, wrists, crooks of my arms, cheeks, and corners of my mouth are actually blistering and turning bright red, I'm still afraid of wasting anything. 

I finally convinced myself to heft the tub into the office. I left it on a counter with a "free" sign on it, and by lunch it had been taken. I felt a little better because it didn't go in the trash, but the urge to not waste anything is strong with this one!

How do all of you get rid of stuff that you're afraid will go to waste? 

Frozen archaeology: a hoarder's freezer

Everyone wants to reduce the amount that they spend on food. We spent over $400 on groceries last month and I feel like there's some room (pun intended) for us to lower that number a bit. But we already buy very little processed food. We shop the edge of the store, buy house-brand everything, and shop at the cheapest store in town. We buy in bulk. The freezer is full. So what are we doing wrong?

Maybe what we're doing wrong is being too much like my hoarder family. In the name of food allergies, finicky palates and frugality, their freezers (plural!) look like this:

click to enlarge the horror!

There is stuff in those freezers that has been there for YEARS. My parents never clean out the freezers and never defrost them. It may be frozen, but is it still edible? Is it even still safe?

But my life shouldn't be about them, it should be about me. Only last month did I start to look at my freezer with an eye for hoarding habits. Sure enough, I felt a need for the freezer to be FULL:

Why do I think I need to have a full freezer?

1. My frugal brain tells me it's cheaper to buy stuff on sale. But for me that's a myth because stuff gets freezer burn and spoils in my freezer typically before I dig deep enough to remember that it's there. When it's so full that I can't see what's in there, I end up buying extra because I think I'm out of something.

2. My starved eating disorder brain worries about not having the right food around when I want it. Just because it's not in my freezer doesn't mean I'm going to starve or be painfully deprived. I can always go out and get what I want.

3. My first world brain wants choices. Maybe today I'll want raisin bread and tomorrow I'll want wheat, and Monday I'll want white. But why should I worry about keeping a smorgasbord in my freezer when I live a few blocks from a grocery store?

4. My eco-friendly brain says that it's more energy efficient to keep a full freezer than an empty one. That only works if I don't end up throwing out spoiled food.

These beliefs are all myths for me. Maybe they're truths for you and that's okay, but for me they spell out one thing. It's time to use up what's in the freezer and not completely fill it up again! My freezer today:

better than last month! sorta

My sister-in-law keeps a list of the freezer's contents on the door. I'm not sure I'm diligent enough to keep up with the list. But making it this once might give me a better idea of what I have, and what I can use in our meals this week.

1.   6 qts frozen peaches (will go into jam tomorrow)

2.   1 pre-made lasagna (can keep this at work for emergencies)

3.   1 qt frozen grapes

4.   1 container fudge

5.   1 bag of coffee

6.   4 pounds of butter

7.   1 pt raspberries

8.   2 slices pizza

9.   frozen banana slices

10.  bag of green beans

11.  bag of carrots

12.  bag of stir fry veggies

13.  bag of mixed veggies

14.  bag of blueberries

15.  1 pound sliced cheese (freezer-burned, tossed out)

16.  ginger root

17.  parsley

18.  bag of pre-made raviolis

19.  oatmeal cookies

20.  25 cadbury eggs (they're seasonal!)

21.  a tray of yogurt starter

22.  flank steak

23.  hot dogs

24.  2 pork loins

25.  5 pounds hamburger

26.  raspberry ice cream

27.  3 pts of sofrito

28.  2 jars of strawberry jam

29.  1 jar of pear jam

30.  2 soy burgers

31.  1 chicken patty

32.  2 pounds of margerine

If that's what I can stuff into my freezer, then it's a crying shame how much food is going to waste in my family's freezers. My goal this month is to reduce the freezer contents by about half. Hopefully that will also help reduce our food bills. My ultimate goal is to be able to look at the freezer and not have to move things to know what is stored.

How do you keep your freezer organized? Does buying in bulk work for you or do you prefer an empty or half-full freezer?