Cutting the grocery budget....

Today I shopped at three places: Wegmans, Costco, and Giant. It took me three hours from the time I left until the time I got home. But overall, it was a huge success. I bought so much food, plus plenty of household goods, and I paid excellent prices. I spent $180 today; which, I am embarrassed to say, is about 40-50% of what we used to spend before my husband was laid off.

BTL (before the layoff), we only shopped at one store, Bloom, simply because it was the most convenient. We impulsed shopped, rarely had a list, and paid no attention to what was on sale or in season. We purchased TONS of processed food, lots of soda, name brand foods only, lots of cheese, lots of icecream, lots of cookies and crackers and fruity gummy chewy things and frozen pizzas and kids cuisines, plus we bought almost all of our household goods from here was well. I sometimes bought paper products from Costco, but I never left Costco without spending $200-$300, and even I realized that I wasn't saving much money if I went into Costco to buy paper towels and left with $180+ of unplanned purchases.

Wegmans has great prices on paper towels and toilet paper, even better than Costco - it worked out to be 100 sheets of paper towels for $1 at Wegmans, compared to 67 sheets of paper towels for $1 at Costco. My sister loves the Costco paper towels, but the Wegmans ones seem pretty good for our purposes. Frozen vegetables here are a good price, but I need to bring a cooler next time to take advantage of that.

Also, great prices on egg-free pasta (.69 for Wegman's spaghetti), canned vegetables (.39 for corn) and chicken (.79 lb). I got 4 lbs of oranges for $3, and 6 pounds of prebagged apples for $1 per lb. Also 5 pounds of potatoes for $2, and bananas at .57 a pound.

Costco is the way to go for eggs (3 dozen), bread ($3.99 for 2 loafs of whole wheat), yogurt ($6.something for 18), dishwashing detergent ($7 something for two giant boxes). Soymilk is inexpensive here, although Chris only likes Soysilk Vanilla. So we'll still get one of those a week for him, but use the Costco soymilk for cooking and breakfast cereal.

Speaking of cereal, the price of cheerios can't be beat here. I also bought over 4 pounds of purple grapes, 2 quarts of grape tomatoes, and a seasoned pork roast that was $3.29 per pound but is soooooo good!! That $11 will feed us for 3 nights. I will also buy my rice here.

I went to Giant because the vanilla yogurt, strawberries, and fortified pulp-free orange juice were on sale.

Anyway, I did spend $30 over my $150 budget, but next week should be well under $150, since I purchased enough of many things for two weeks.