So I have a huge confession to make. I guess it isn’t really a confession… so much as it is an admission. My stockpile is at capacity. A few days ago I was going through the freezer in my garage and I realized that there was no free space in it. And the freezer is ginormous. Then I was going through one of my pantries and I realized it too did not have much free space. And I started feeling guilty. When I blog on Addicted to Saving and when I give coupon classes, I help all of you learn how to get the best deals while you are shopping and I give you tips on growing your stockpile. But I also tell you that if you let your food expire or if you have more food in your stockpile than you will use, that you are actually being wasteful and not good stewards. So, all that to say, I am going to be going through my cabinets, pantries and freezers and we are going to start really living off of our stockpile. And we are going to give away a ton of food that we will not eat.
Why do I need to tell you this? For a couple of reasons 🙂 First, I want you to see that it IS possible to grow a stockpile even with the tightening coupon policies, higher prices of food and less and less high value coupons to use. (I’m still sad about the fact that we don’t get Red Plum coupon inserts in Tampa Bay.) When I first started couponing, we bought 8 (yes eight) newspapers every Sunday because I wanted 8 of each coupon. Now, we buy 4 papers. And most often, you will find us buying 2 boxes of pasta (even if they are dirt cheap) or two bottles of juice, etc etc. Even with us buying lesser quantities, we still have grown our stockpile. So don’t think that you have to buy 10 boxes of pasta at one shot. If you buy 4 boxes of pasta this week and then another 4 boxes of pasta next month, chances are that you will have a sufficient enough stockpile of pasta to live off of one box a week for quite a while. (Of course every family has different food preferences and your family sizes are different – so if you go through more pasta than once box a week, you will want to stock up on more than my previous example.)
Secondly, I want this to act as a reminder to you that you too should go through your stockpiles and make sure that your food is all fresh and that if you too have 10 boxes of pasta (5 of which you will never eat) you should give some away! There is nothing better than giving food away and blessing others!
And lastly, I am showing this because you are going to notice that my weekly Photo Show & Tell is changing. For the past 6 years, every Friday, we have gone grocery shopping with the intent of taking advantage of all of the best deals and then showing all of you what the best deals are. Every week we have bought food we didn’t need strictly with the intent of taking a photo of it and giving you step by step instructions on what coupons to use to take advantage of the deal. For us, money has become tighter recently. And I can’t bring myself to pay for and buy more food that we don’t need when we have more than enough to eat for months and months to come. In the freezer in our garage, we have at least 25 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and at least 20 lbs of lean ground beef. And I have at least 15 freezer slow cooker meals that I just need to thaw and cook. I just can’t justify spending more money knowing I have all of that food! That said, if there are stellar deals, we will still take advantage of them and instead of adding them to my stockpile, we will just immediately give them away! I can’t resist stellar deals!
SO – starting tomorrow, I will do my weekly shopping trip and I will take advantage of some of the sales. But not all of them. And you may notice that I’m buying a lot less (and fingers crossed – spending a lot less). But in addition to that, I will also put together a shopping list you can follow that gives you all of the best deals, prices, coupons and total out of pocket spending. I know many of you rely on my Photo Show & Tell to help figure out what to buy each week. And I don’t want to stop helping you. So my Photo Show & Tell will show you what I bought and how I bought everything. But it will also give you a grocery list that will show you what I would buy if I had room in my stockpile. Sound good?
Update – I wanted to add one more thing 🙂 For fresh produce (we love our fresh produce) we will either continue to get it at the coop we belong to OR we will stop the coop and get the produce that is on sale at Publix, Aldi or maybe even Sam’s Club. We haven’t decided yet how to handle produce…
To end this, I would love to hear how your stockpiles are doing? Are you too overflowing at the seams? Or do you need to add to it? Have you had a difficult time growing your stockpile? Share your thoughts! I would love to hear them!
Go HERE to read Introduction to Stockpiling and learn how to grow your stockpile!
Thanks for coming to Addicted to Saving! Here’s a little bit about me so you can know who’s behind all these posts!
My name is Liza and I began my money-saving journey in the Spring of 2009 as a way to stretch a limited household income. I had lost my job and my hubby was self-employed. I launched Addicted to Saving in November of 2009 and it has grown by leaps and bounds. Since then, my hubby and I have struggled with the ups and downs of two failed adoptions and are now LOVING being parents to our little man Asher who we brought home from Ethiopia in August of 2013. I feel incredibly blessed to be able to help you save money. My goal is that you will have FUN and become empowered to save more and more money each week..
OMG, that looks EXACTLY like my freezer and pantry! My New Year’s Resolution was to use my stockpile. I have two teenage boys and I honestly think I have enough food (and cleaning supplies) in this house to last until they leave for college. I’m with ya sister!
Yes! I’ve thought about doing a blog just on living off my stockpile, but it seems like too much work, lol. Maybe you can do it! 🙂
Im so glad I read the comments – I thought it would be neat to see how ya work it all out and put some meals together :))
Thanks for the candid post. I have been following you since August 2014 as I started my couponing/stock piling journey. I always look forward to seeing your Friday shopping posts as it helps me plan my Saturday trips to Publix. I am slowly building a stockpile but as my husband has a severe gluten and soy allergy, we are limited with what we can buy. Some of the deals are killer but are on processed food, or foods containing wheat and or soy.
Would love if you could dedicate some posts on how to maximize savings on specialty food items and produce. I am so excited this week that Udi’s gluten fee pizza will be bogo at publix and there are coupons!! I sure will be stockpiling those. Thanks again for all the advice and tidbits. Since I have been following you I save at least $40-50 a week in groceries! Which helps as I now have a 8 month old baby at home that goes through diapers and formula like crazy 🙂
Kathy – I can definitely try to dedicate more posts to helping you out with specialty foods and produce! Two years ago (at this time of year), I went off gluten and meat due to trying to regulate some hormonal issues I experience. I was off of it for 6 months until we had our trips out of the country and at that point, I realized gluten-filled food was one of the “safest” foods I could eat without getting food-poisoning (in Ethiopia). All this to say, I feel your pain and remember just how difficult it was to save on gluten free food – especially packaged g-free food. If I were you, I would definitely stock up on the g-free sales available this week at Publix! And, if you haven’t already, check out Vitacost.com. They often have 10% off and BOGO sales on their products. I boughts lots and lots of quinoa, almond flour, gluten free baking mixes, etc from Vitacost. I promise to add more specialty posts to my blog! Give me a bit of time. Oh – for produce – we have found that the best way to get a lot affordably is joining coops. However, if you only like a few specific fruits and veggies – you can get great deals on produce at Sam’s and Aldi :)Thanks for your comment and for following my blog since ’14! And congrats on your little one. 🙂
Thanks for the tips and I look forward to your future posts on specialty items. I also want to tell you that I read your adoption story and am so happy you found each other and all worked out. I struggled with infertility for 10 years and when I got pregnant in 2013 naturally it was the shock of my life! I was just going to start the adoption process when it happened. Every family has their journey and I appreciate you being so open about yours. He is a cutie and I have loved seeing pictures and updates you post about him.
My stockpile is a bit smaller than yours, but still a good stockpile for 2 people. Just recently, Walgreens has had Kraft Mac & Cheese for 79 cents so I bought 3 (the limit) and used some of my Extra Savings earned bucks so I ended up paying just 39 cents total. Went back today to get 3 more boxes but they were out of stock so I got a rain check. Yep, I’ll use it soon.
Had a freezer stocked to the gills, as was my refrigerator, only to have the appliance stop working while we were out of town for 3 days. So … had to toss out EVERYTHING in fridge & freezer on January 1st and start all over again. Sure am glad I’m a huge couponer and look for the sales and bargains!
Thank you so much Liza for all the great work on this blog. You have helped me save about 50% on groceries! Although I only started about 6 months ago, my advice for stockpiling would be DISCIPLINE! I have a dedicated bookshelf for groceries, plus a shelf in the laundry for paper/cleaning supplies. And a 15 cubic foot fridge/freezer. Therefore, not letting this small space get overfilled keeps me from buying too much and makes it easy to keep things freshly rotated. I’ll let you know if I can keep this discipline up for another 6 months 🙂
How do you stockpile so much meat!? We have shelves and shelves of other items but have never once seen good prices on chicken OR ground beef. Any suggestions?
Katie, great question, and YES!, I do have a suggestion. 🙂 We stockpile with Zaycon Foods, and have been for years now. I literally only buy meat maybe twice or 3x a year b/c we stockpile when Zaycon is in our area. Read my post here about Zaycon and hopefully this will give you a good idea of how it all works: https://www.addictedtosaving.com/boneless-skinless-chicken-breasts-sale/. Let me know if you have any questions after reading it.
I enjoyed reading your post. While I only have a small stockpile, I understand. I can say that I was happy to have these items when I received a phone call and was told that someone so close to me need food. I was so excited that I went into my freezer and my pantry and I just gave and gave and gave. It felt so good to have have food to give away. I must admit, I was also thinking about the space I would be clearing for my next shopping trip. Again, I enjoyed reading your post and look forward to the next post.
Thank you for the kind words!