After running the Quicken reports on our finances last month, I’ve been going through and identifying some money leaks. One that I’ve targeted for repair are the little trips to the store because we’ve run out of something. Now I am already careful about groceries and it wasn’t food we were having trouble with. It was the other household necessities, plastic wrap, shampoo, trash bags, etc.
I began by making an inventory of the items we currently had and those we needed. Then, I developed a master list of items, entered them into my word processor, and printed out an inventory form. I estimated how many of each item we would use in a month and placed the quantities on the list. After printing the list out, one copy came with me to the store, and another copy was placed on the refrigerator where I will note when I run out of something. This will make it easy to update the list next month which will hopefully be correct for the monthly amount consumed.
On the first of the month I made a shopping trip where I purchased the quantity of these items per the list. As I placed the items into the cart, I wrote down the cost per item, which I used to calculate unit costs. During the next month, I will be doing price comparisons at different stores.
Now the storage of all these items took a little bit of thought. I had to clear some extra space in the garage (remember we just cleaned it out) and pantry for these items. I needed to be able to find and reach the supplies when they are needed.
So far I am happy with the way this has worked out. The supplies are organized and easily accessible, and I won’t have to be making any “quick trips†this coming week to purchase something we need.
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OK, you are waaaaay more organized about your pantry/household goods than I ever will be. I salute you!
Are you going to make exceptions for sales and loss leaders? The frugal people I know seem to save the most money by stocking up on sales and loss leaders.
Angie: Thanks for the salute!
Cathy: For right now I am sticking to the once-a-month trip for household items. In the past I haven’t found the items I buy on sale very often or at a large enough discount to warrant the stockpiling. I will still be using coupons when I can find them. Now, if I still had a little one in diapers that would be different – I would definitely stalk the sales on those and stockpile when I found the price low.