Buying in bulk,,, part 2

Greetings!

Before we get started I would like to say my heart and prayers go out to the folks in Texas affected by those horrible storms last night.  I cannot imagine the damage softball sized hail must have done.

Doing a little at a time to get started, buying in bulk does not have to break the bank account or make your regular grocery budget suffer.  I suggest starting with just 10% of your grocery budget going for bulk purchases.  For example if you have a $100 a week budget just $10 a week can get you started and I bet you won't even miss that from your regular shopping.  If your local grocery store runs canned vegetable sales that is a good place to start.  Buy $10 of the vegetables you would use.  Don't forget to check the expiration dates and get the furthest ones out from your date of purchase.

Our local store also has 10 items for $10 sales about once a month.  I usually use these sales to stock up on condiments, pickles, pastas and other non-perishable items.  Canned soups on sale are a good stock up item.

I also take about 10% of my food budget and put it back in cash for the more expensive items to stock up on such as meat, 25 and 50 pound bags of flour, and things I use a lot of.  Like I mentioned in my previous post, I do a lot of baking so therefore it pays for me to buy my ingredients in a larger bulk, it might not for you.  Always make sure you only purchase items you actually use.

Recently I found a store, Gordon Food Service.  It is a store geared to sell to commercial businesses such as restaurants, grocery stores and bakeries but will sell to the general public.  Most, if not all of their items are in bulk size.  I will start buying some of my bulk items there because I will use them in the bulk size with no problem.  But again, that is not for everyone.  It is not a bargain if you buy more than you can use by the expiration date.  Shop around to find the best bargains for what you use!  This particular store is an hour from my home.  It would not be worth the extra gas if I were to go every week for regular shopping but when I need to stock up on baking supplies for example it will be worth the trip to do it once a month or once every other month as needed.

Every couple of months I make a trip to Illinois Amish country to buy certain items there in bulk as well.  I usually make a day of it, do my shopping, go out to lunch and just site see while I am there.  I have a cooler to take with me to keep the meats and cheeses I buy cold.  I plan my day so the perishable items are purchased last, just before I drive the hour and a half back home.

Where to store things once you purchase them can be a daunting challenge.  I am fortunate to live in a house with a nice usable basement.  I have a room down there that is set aside for my food storage.  It is cool and dark.  I have lined the room with shelves.  I also have a huge freezer, so stocking up on meats is easy for me.  But, there was a time when I lived in an apartment and still stocked up as much as I could at that time.  Of course I did not do as much of the bulk shopping as I do now but I always managed to have enough extra food stocked up to carry us at least a month in an emergency.

I found that the majority of the apartments I have lived in over the years had ample closets.  I took a closet that really only stored stuff I didn't use very often and claimed that for my food pantry.  The items that were in there were weeded through, I got rid of some and the rest that I still wanted to keep I found new places to store it.  I lined the closet with shelves and then made sure I purchased only items that would keep well, had a long shelf life and I would use.  I also took low boy totes and filled them with extra items and slide them under the bed out of the way.  But don't forget they are there!  You can actually get about 6 of these totes under a full size bed.

Over the years I have found we often do not utilize the space we have to the fullest. For example,  sometimes our shelves are spaced really far apart in our kitchen cabinets.  I purchased the metal shelves that have legs on them so you can put them on an existing shelf and create another shelf above it giving you twice the storage space for smaller items.  Doubling your storage capacity in this manner gives you more room to store your extra items.

Those 3 tiered hanging baskets are great for storing small items such as extra spices, bags of pasta, and things that are light weight.  I use a couple of them and typically store things that I will be using in the near future.  If I am going to keep extra pasta for a while I like to store that in a cool, dark area because it will extend its shelf life a bit.

Before I got a huge freezer and only had the freezer that is built into the fridge I managed to store about 65 lbs of meat in there at a time.  For two people that is a lot of meat.  One of the kitchen tools I swear by and highly recommend for storing meat and vegetables in the freezer is a Food Saver Vacuum Sealer.  Not only does it keep the food as fresh as the day you bought it and prevent freezer burn it makes the packages easier to store in a small freezer.  It is well worth the investment!

I have had many brands of vacuum sealers over the years but I find the food saver brand to be the best and especially their bags.  You can purchase directly from food saver on their web site and save a ton of money. The food saver is not only for meats and vegetables but you can store many items in them as well and prolong the shelf life of your foods.

Another possible storage space is drawers.  I once lived in an apartment that had about 8 drawers in the kitchen.  I used half of them for things like silverware, utensils, towels and the like.  The other half were then used to store canned items, spices, pastas and rice.  That allowed me to free up some shelf space for larger items.

Get creative!!  I am sure you can come up with some unusual places to store non-perishable foods that even I have not thought of!!

In my next post I plan on discussing the best ways to store flours, grains, cereals etc. to give them the longest shelf life possible.

Until next time,,,,,,,Blessings!