The following is a reprint of a previously published post. Enjoy!
One of the basic tenets of frugality is to stock up on needed items when they’re on sale/cheap and then shop from your stash, instead of needing to run out to pay full price.
But this is not always practical or advisable. If your money is being spent stocking up on household supplies, then it’s not available for immediate needs such as paying bills, backup emergency funds or charitable giving. Plus, it takes up a lot of space to store all this stuff.
I am not someone who keeps a huge stash of sale items filling up my pantry. A) I have no pantry, and B) that’s just not my personality. But there are ways that I do stock up.
Items that I stock up on are those that have a long shelf life and are at a rock bottom price. Examples would be 2-pound blocks of Tillamook cheese for $3.99 or $1 jars of jam. Essentially though, it needs to be a loss leader or close to it for me to bother with buying much extras. I will not buy something just because it’s cheap or free. It has to be something I would normally buy. So no weird products, and minimal packaged food. Even if I have a coupon.
One method to efficiently stock up on groceries that I don’t take advantage of is to use a freezer. Yes, I have my above-the fridge freezer, but there’s only so much food that can fit in there. I try to simply not use it as frozen food storage, and it’s usually filled with extra loaves of bread, individually frozen chicken breasts and bits of this and that.
Another time that I stock up on food or household goods, is when the item is bought in a speciality store that I only visit infrequently. This can be the rice wine vinegar from the Asian market, or the three-packs of soap that I buy at the Dollar Tree store. Buying these items away from the traditional grocery store saves me a lot of money, so it’s worth it to stock up. Plus, it’s a pain in the tuchus to run out of these items, so I like knowing that I’m set for awhile.
Are you the type of shopper that keeps a deep stash of pantry staples, or do you buy food and other household items as you run out? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
{ 41 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve been building up a small stockpile since we moved into our house a few months ago- our old home was far too small to do any sort of stockpiling. I keep things like peanut butter, toilet paper, our favorite pasta on mega sale, and the bulk stuff from costco. Being at home with four young children it’s just so much easier to have a mini stock to pull from rather than run out all the time. I try to do our shopping in two big trips each month- once at the grocery store and once at costco, so I stock about a month of what we need, maybe a bit more. A freezer came with the house and I must say it’s been pretty awesome to have for freezing butter and meat on sale, meals cooked in bulk etc. I’ve read about these extreme suvivalists stocking a year or move of rations and that seems pretty crazy and probably wasteful in the long run. My goal with stocking up is a combination of saving money and simplifying my life… it’s just not a reality for me to be dashing off to every different supermarket in town shopping the loss leaders- maybe someday but not anytime soon!
I have two different types of stockpiles. One is the loss-leader stockpile of things we use all the time. For instance, when our local store has a good sale on the toilet paper we buy, then an additional $5 off a $25 purchase of it, you can bet I’m going home with a wall ‘o TP! The other type of stockpiling I do is for my husband who has weird and varied food issues. There are certain foods that he can eat that I can only find online, so I wind up getting a case of, say, gluten-, corn- and soy-free gnocchi.
We do not stock up, simply because we have no place to keep “overstock”. We do buy multiples of things such as kitty little and toilet paper, since those are items that, if you run out of them, it kinda sucks. I will also stock up on things that I would normally buy if I come across a really good coupon. Example, I recently had a $5 coupon for hair dye. I already had one box, but I went ahead and bought another, because it will keep forever, but the coupon only good for a month.
There are some things that I would like to buy in bulk, but sadly we don’t live near any stores that sell in bulk.
Also, I would like to have a freezer for freezing fresh veggies from the garden. But until I get rid of about 79% more of my stuff, there is no room!
I stock anything that is a RBP. It affords me good meals for less than USDA stats for thrifty shopping, I don’t buy something just because it’s on sale, but I do buy the things in my staple list of things I use on a regular basis. For example, pasta is in sale at FM on a in ad coupon for .79′, limit four. There is a coupon on line for 1.00 off four. Nets .55 a box and they have high fiber. You can pay as much as 159 for the same pasta. It doesn’t make sense to buy it just when you,need it.
We’ve had a small chest freezer for years – worth its weight in gold! We keep on sale meats, extra bread, in-season berries, other deals, making sure to give it a good clean-out and defrost at least twice a year!
I am a couponer so I have at least a year supply of most things. Like toothpaste, toothbrushes, tp etc. And a six month supply of food items that have a long shelf life. Last week at Target Mom’s Best cereal was only .80 a box so I stocked up and bought 16 boxes. They will be gone long before the expiration dates.
I also have gifts for my kids birthday and Christmas already. Luckily they are still young and not picky about the clearance toys they receive. They have not started to ask for specific stuff yet. 🙂 Not sure what I will do when that starts. 🙂 I always find great stuff at Target for 70% off in January and July of each year.
My husband and I are our entire household, so it is wildly impractical for us to stock up on most things perishable. We do make use of Costco about once every six months, where we stock up on toilet paper and my preferred brand of sanitary napkins, as well as snacks I can take to school – I am a big fan of the crisp snap peas! We do sometimes buy fish at Costco and then repackage it into ziploc bags that each contain 2 servings, but we use our regular grocery store for meat as we have different preferences. We always check the produce section at Costco to see if they have good deals on fruit and if they do, we pull out our dehydrator and make our own dried fruit!
See Chris’s comment above, except that ours is a large upright freezer and we also keep assorted garden produce (tomatoes, pumpkin, etc.) and our 1/4 cow and 1/2 pig (purchased each year from a friend who raises the animals) in there.
I do also tend to stockpile nonperishable health and beauty products (TP, shampoo, etc.). But I have to remind myself periodically that there’s a fine line between stockpiling and hoarding, and give myself periodic “not buying that” reminders. For example, with what I already had on hand plus what I picked up in The Great Trashpick in January, I’ve got enough hair care products to last from now till Kingdom Come!
This is a real key, if you are going to stock up, to have “do not buy” lists. 🙂 Right now I have about 10 cans of (free) shaving cream. Even if it’s free, I won’t buy it until we are needing it.
I am a reformed stock-piler. I do stock up on household goods: detergent, toilet paper, dish washing tablets when they are a great price but I don’t do much of that with food. Too often our tastes/preferences change and then we have food nobody wants to eat. We gave away our freezer months ago because we lost all the contents twice as a result of prolonged power outages, over the years. We left it unplugged after the last outage and made do without it.
I stock up on a few items if they are on sale – sugar, detergent, toilet paper – mostly non-perishable items. If I have room in my freezer and they have chicken leg quarters on sale, I will buy things like that and repackage them.
I quit buying the Sunday paper for the ads and coupons long ago. I wasn’t really saving money. I don’t buy name brand that often. I buy a lot of local stuff and many of those coupons were for cleaning supplies and boxed foods, that we don’t use.
I make my own cleaners from vinegar, baking soda and Dawn dishwashing liquid. I’d rather stockpile non-perishable homemade canned food, than stuff with preservatives. The only freezer we have is on top in our fridge, so I can’t store a lot of frozen food.
I keep things like crackers and peanut butter to snack on, so I’m more likely to have 2-3 jars ob PB and extra crackers than I am regular canned foods from the grocers. I keep what we eat most of on hand. I like to keep beans, rice, sugar and flour on hand. They are good staples to have, if we could only eat from the pantry.
It’s good to think about stuff like this. Thanks!
I used to keep a stash of mostly store cupboard food items, but have more recently decided to run it down and just buy things as we need them on a weekly basis. Living in London we are never more than a short walk away from a food shop if we need anything urgently and many of them are open until quite late in the evening.
I guess I felt a bit restricted by having to use stuff up all the time. I feel freer to cook whatever I like now (although I do still menu plan), instead of feeling obligated to use what’s been stashed. I like the cupboards being slightly emptier too. Makes everything easier to get to and I know exactly what I have in there, so things don’t get overlooked and go to waste.
I have recently bought washing up liquid and dishwasher tabs in bulk as I got them at a good price and it saves on plastic bottles that need to be recycled, but other than that I don’t really stockpile any more.
Arrgh, I’ve rewritten my comment 3 times so it wouldn’t be a novel and I do realize that it’s still too long, sorry!
I’m also a reformed stockpiler. We used to have 6 kids at home back in the days (down to just 2 teens now) so we’re still using toiletries that I got for free or close to free “back in the days” when I used coupons a lot more than nowadays. It’s sometimes hard to remember that I’m not shopping/cooking for 8 anymore!
Since I’m trying to keep our expenses down by shopping in my pantry first when I plan my weekly menus (example here: http://imperfectlyfrugally.blogspot.com/2015/03/in-my-fridge-dinner-plans_22.html), and I shop for most of my food at Aldi where they don’t accept coupons, I tend not to stockpile too much these days. I make notes of the great sales at Publix but nowadays I don’t rush to get them, even if I can get items for free or almost for free unless I truly need them. So right now I’m avoiding spending money on Easter chocolate candy. However, I don’t like not having what I need when I cook so I make sure I always have extra condiments/oil/tomato sauce, etc. Running out of those items would mean that I would run to Publix because it’s much closer to my home than Aldi, but it’s also much more expensive, so I would overspend. I ran out of bread today but I talked myself out of going to the store before Wednesday (when I do all of my shopping) and I baked bread at home. It’s happened a few times recently, though, so I do buy extra loaves and freeze them (I don’t eat as much bread if it’s not homemade, I find!), but obviously still not enough.
I do tend to stock up on pasta when they’re on BOGO at Publix and I have good coupons because we eat pasta very often. I also stockpile on meat when there’s a great price per lb on it like loss leaders or 50% off clearances at Save A Lot. I do have the side-by-side fridge/freezer for veggies and fruit and a chest freezer for meats and baked goods. I buy certain vegetables when they’re on sale, even if I don’t need them right away, and dice and freeze them for future use (peppers, onions, celery…).
Like Katy, I stock up on Dollar Tree items when I go there to limit the number of times I’m tempted to fill my cart with “just $1!” items. So I buy 2 or 3 jars of minced garlic or all the peppermint herbal tea they carry (only 3 boxes last time).
I also stockpile on items that I would only buy from certain stores that aren’t close to my house, like the coconut oil from Trader Joe’s.
The downside of stockpiling food is the risk of it spoiling if, like someone mentioned, you lose power, or if you get pantry moths for instance. I don’t particularly pay attention to expiration dates (I recently cooked some meat that I had bought and frozen back in 2009!) but some toiletries will indeed go bad with age. Hair coloring, actually, doesn’t last forever. I recently was cleaning my bathroom closet and found some old bottles of it and realized that the chemicals had eaten their way out of the plastic bottles and spilled into the boxes. I think I had bought those 5 years ago or so, though. Still, yikes. It actually burned through the plastic!
I’m kind of a food hoarder…. I have the regular pantry/fridge/freezer on top of fridge, and then I have the extra pantry and two chest freezer full of food. I always say that we will eat all of it, and then I end up buying more. Difficult for me to resist a good sale…
I also tend to stock on soaps, shampoo, toothpaste and toothbrushes.
I used to keep a big pantry when the kids were small. Now our youngest has flown the nest I’m trying to shop and cook for two again, it’s hard 🙂 We still have our chest freezer but keep much less in it. As far as the pantry goes I keep one of each item I know will be used, otherwise I’ll just hoard. We’ve had the pantry moths, no fun so no more dozen boxes of pasta no matter how cheap they are. No coupons for me, but I do shop loss leaders quite a bit. Aldi is a God send as well.
I stock up, but then eat it down and stock up again, in cycles. I try to have non-perishables/non-cook items stocked on hand for hurricane season as well. We have a small upright freezer, and I store stocked up meats, homemade broths, home frozen veggies from the garden, leftovers packaged for lunches and, don’t laugh, dog kibble and bird seed. I have 2 very small dogs, but buying in the larger sizes of kibble is more economical, which is important since it’s holistic and grain free, and that stuff isn’t cheap. I pour some in a covered plastic container and keep the rest in the freezer until it’s needed, so it isn’t stale and refused by the time they reach the end of the package. Freezing bird seed keeps the weevils and ants from marching in the house two by two. I dole it out as needed, too.
When we found out my husband’s employer was going to shut down the business a few years ago, I stocked up big time on TP, toothpaste, deodorant, dry goods, pantry staples, and frozen meats before he was laid off. It helped us for a good long while. Now I try to always have some extra of things that I can get on sale, but I don’t overdo it. I remember my mother had an upright freezer, huge chest freezer and a side-by-side refrigerator, all full, for just her and my dad. I vowed never to do that.
I am a household of one with a side by side refrigerator/ freezer. I stock up on both non perishables and perishables and sundries. I only buy at the lowest price (I keep a price book). This has enabled me to eat whatever/ whenever I like without going over budget. I do take care to rotate items and watch expiration dates. I rarely buy packaged foods, just ingredients. I would love a small freezer, but really, this would be excessive for me. The only purchases I have made this month is cheese ($2.99/#) and liquid milk ($2.89/ gal). Because a chicken, roast, or package of pork/ ham lasts me several meals, my freezer comes in handy to put cooked foods on hold if I get tired of them, as well. Not everyone cooks and shops like I do. And even fewer understand my methods… But in the end, frugality while living well is the goal, right?
Up until 2 years ago when I retired, I worked – and was paid – during the school year so starting in April each year, I would buy TP, shampoo, bar soap, and the like to avoid having to run to Target for an item or 2 and end up with a 1/2 cart load of “stuff”. We do have a chest freezer and this past fall I stopped buying meat and we ate down the freezer – now I am slowly filling it again but only at low cost/good quality meat. There are only 2 products I stockpile these days – canned tomatoes – I prefer the Red Gold Brand but mostly cause I love the label (yes, I’m a very deep thinker!!) and sale priced chocolate!!
We have room in the house, so I do stock up when things I will use are on sale. I have two teens at home, plus me and my spouse, so I know that we’ll eat things like cereal, oatmeal, pasta, frozen veggies, and loss leader meats (I have an extra freezer, so am able to stock up) . I also stock up on soap, shampoo, body wash and razors, nothings extreme, but enough so that when my teens want to shower they have the supplies ready. 🙂
I am working on food storage. I follow “The Prudent Homemaker” and I like her philosophy of building a pantry in case of emergencies such as a job loss. I am only filling the pantry with items we will definitely use.
Things I stock up on:
toothpaste
deodorant
razors – I stopped for a few months as I counted 40 razors and I rarely shave my legs, but dh shaves every day.
store brand advil
toilet paper which I find is cheaper on sale and with a coupon at my grocery store than Costco
ditto paper towels
tampons and pads for dd
couple of cans of soup and tuna
shampoo
diet soda for dh and I
I’m lucky that I have a pantry in my kitchen and space in my laundry room. I have just the top of the fridge freezer.
We have a very small apartment but when some staples we go through quickly go on sale, I can’t resist stocking up! Right now we are stocked with soap, frozen raw chicken, mayo and Nutella. Lots of Nutella.
I have the smallest stand alone freezer just for baked goods, flours, nuts, oatmeal etc. I like to bake and want it all handy for when the urge, and time, permit. Plus, i have a second freezer that’s the next size up. This holds the meats, frozen vegetables, cheeses, odds and ends. We’re not fans of most canned vegetables, so i buy cases of frozen when the price is right. (Although, i do buy canned tomatoes.) The fridge freezer holds my supply of wild blueberries, wild blackberries, butter and a few other odds and ends. (Pancake flour, yeast, garden basil…) Like someone else mentioned, we also go through all the freezers on a yearly basis. We run it down, build it back up for the Winter. Most meals are made from scratch; i hate to run out of anything.
I don’t do a ton of stocking up on food. We’re just two people so if I find things like fire roasted diced tomatoes (my FAVORITE) I’ll buy a couple of cans, but mostly so that I don’t have to run to the store. However, I recently discovered the wonderland that is Costco so my freezer is stocked with shredded cheese and ground turkey at the moment. It’s pretty awesome.
The one area where I have surplus is in cat supplies. I have SO MUCH cat food and litter. It’s expensive so when it’s on sale I seriously stockpile. But I have 5 tubs of litter and 4 bags of food and one cat so I think I’m good for a while.
Toilet paper.
I buy 48 rolls at a time ( we are a 3 person household)
Let’s just say I’m paranoid about running out…
Long time reader………..and long time on being a a “commenting” slacker! Lol.
I just has to feel you how much I LOVE your blog. And how much I enjoy and learn from it 🙂
Reader’s Digest version of my life: unhappily married to a spender, lived on a golf course (yet we never played golf), vacations to Disney…..basically ridiculous looking back. Happily divorced (from an unhealthy relationship) and my two kiddos and I live in a HOME that is 1/4 the size of our previous home.
There are months that I am choosing between putting gas in the car or buy groceries. I don’t say that for sympathy……it’s just a fact for this time period in my life.
I’m so happy that I found and loved your blog before my financial situation took a complete breakdown!!! I don’t look at being frugal as a curse or something I have to endure. It has been part of the overall big gift for my kids and I.
Thank you!!
So happy you’ve chosen to delurk and share your story.
Right now I am finishing a dinner of homemade white bean soup with homemade cheddar biscuits. Water was the beverage and the napkins were from a free pile. The company? My sweet 16-year-old son. All frugal, and all exactly what they should be.
We only do groceries about twice a month now that we live further from the big grocery stores…and when we go we get more than we need of certain things. Even if we havent run out yet we will buy soap, shampoo, laundry soap etc…in order to prevent quick purchases at our corner store grocery stores in our village which are much more expensive. Odd fact, in France dental floss is not very popular and is thus more expensive than in Canada and my mom is bringing lots over when she comes to visit so I will have an odd little stockpile of that.
I am one of the group of reformed stockpilers. In our previous house, I had a lot of storage space and built up impressive supplies of things that were free/cheap and that I knew we would use. Toothpaste (always free!), toilet paper, paper towels, cleaning products, detergent, pasta, coffee…etc. Then we moved. In our new home, I had a hard time storing all this stuff, and we are still using the pile of some things 18 months later. Plus, I sold quite a few things in a garage sale and gave away more.
So, now…I am done with stockpiling. I try to stay one product ahead on the things I hate to run out of. But I am enjoying cleared shelves more than stacked ones these days. Plus, I still have enough cleaning products and garbage bags to last me until the next millennium!
I stockpile in the winter like a squirrel – I’ve been snowed in for over a week during a couple of blizzards and for days during bad snow storms and it is comforting to know you have food and supplies on hand. However, I try to have it eaten down by spring as I don’t like to feel pressed to eat things up before they expire in the spring/summer when I’m eating more fresh foods from the garden and spring storms bring power outages so I don’t like to have a full freezer.
I live in earthquake country so I try to have a baseline of “things we could eat without cooking” on hand: some canned food (beans, tuna, veg, fruit), nut butters, and shelf-stable milk. Our freezer doesn’t hold a lot but when there’s a sale on meat or chicken I buy 5+ lbs and freeze it in smaller packages, then we eat it down until the next sale. I also buy multiples of pantry staples when they’re on sale, but keep it to things we can eat over the next 3-6 months.
I don’t stockpile a lot, and don’t do the extreme couponing to get free toiletry items like many do. I just don’t have the patience, and it seems that CVS is the best place to do that, but our nearest one is really inconvenient…it’s near the University and there’s usually NO parking. None.
That said, I do buy the “family packs” of a lot of things, like TP, tissues and paper towels. I have found this is the cheapest way for me to get them at the quality level I want. I do sometimes buy, say 10 boxes of pasta when they go on sale for 66 cents a box, but you have to buy ten to get the deal. Similarly with soup, and Gatorade for my DH. Over a year ago, I found a really good deal on laundry detergent, buy 2 get 3 free, and I had a coupon as well. We’re still using that laundry detergent…
That is one good thing about Florida… we don’t get double coupons but we don’t have to buy all 10 things to get the promotional pricing when they have a 10 for $x promo. Also we “live in the land of true BOGOs”, according to the lingo that several couponing bloggers use, which means that instead of getting the items for 50% off when there is a Buy 1 Get 1 Free (or BOGO) we pay full price (minus any coupons we have) and we get the 2nd item for free… which means that when there is a BOGO coupon to use with a BOGO sale, we get both items for free. I’m especially excited about the BOGO coupons on the back of the General Mills cereals right now, because Publix has BOGO cereal sales all the time, and since I have 2 coupons, that will mean 4 free boxes!
CVS is very good with their Extracare reward program. I vastly prefer it to Walgreens’ Register Rewards. I guess it’s good that CVS is 20 minutes away whereas Walgreens is only 5 minutes away otherwise I’d be spending more money than I need to!
Stockpiling feels rewarding. In a behavioral psychology perspective, I feel rewarded when I get something for free because I took the time to coupon and match them with loss leaders. I try not to be wasteful, and I like to give some of my stockpile away when I have way too much of it (toothpaste,etc).
Even in the simple act of couponing, I enjoy thinking about the 50 cents I’m saving. Couponing is a reminder of the importance of a penny, a dime, a dollar. Do I really want to spend 5 bucks on that fancy coffee when I just spent all that time and energy saving 10 bucks?
I do stockpile because I coupon. I have a growing family, and I, too, love the relaxation of knowing I don’t have to run to the store for something I don’t have. However, I think people who save use the resources they have around them to not only save money but also as a motivator to continue to save money.
Katy, you have an awesome city full of free piles and a cottage (treasure box) of leftovers. Cool! I love the few free piles I come across in Ohio. Maybe if I had more free piles, I would stockpile with coupons less and vice versa…? Saving and living within your means is so difficult in this society. Having to push back against the pressures of society takes a lot of rewards and motivation.
Then, it all starts to get very complex. A.). I’m trying to save money. B.). I’m trying to be a non-consumer,too. C.) I’m spending a lot of time looking at ads and clipping coupons which are essentially ads which makes me a (mega) consumer on a small budget?
Regardless, I think we all of the same goal. Great blog. I love it.
I was a stocker-upper (not quite a stockpiler) even when I was single. I hate to run out of things. Now that I am married and have a full-size bonus kid and a MIL w/Alzheimer’s, I have what the Mormons might call “a good start”. Our new house has a walk-in pantry. (Woot!) In the enormous garage I have another fridge/freezer, a small upright freezer and two pantry cupboards.
I shop at Grocery Outlet, 99 Only and Costco. I use a list and never coupon. Our lives have been extremely busy lately. Except for a family stroll to the farmer’s market for fresh produce, I have managed to shop for food only once this month. So nice to know I can pull together meals from my larder as needed.
Can someone please explain what loss leaders means?
Never heard it before and never heard it here in Australia
Thanks Ruth
Loss leaders are the specials the stores run to get people into the store. The store takes a loss on the sale of those products just to lead people into the store.
Thanks
We stockpile because we live in the country and have the room. We buy beef by the side, which really fills the freezer. We also get multiple items on sale that we know we typically eat/use. I firmly believe the most expensive food is the food you throw away! So, I really try to only buy what we like. I “shop my freezer and pantry” for my meal plans to limit any spending on full price items.
Love your blog. I haven’t taken the nothing new compact, but seriously try to limit my trash, which I have found seems to follow some of the same ideals. Making my way that direction, anyway!
I stock up on things, but I do so more to save time than to save money. Stuff like toilet paper, contact solution, cat food, cat litter, tissues, toothpaste, lotion, cleaning products, laundry detergent – anything that won’t go bad for quite some time. I’d rather shop once in a rare while and bring home a car full of supplies that will last me several months or even a year, rather than have to run to the store every time I’m getting low on something. My partner enjoys shopping for fresh food, and will usually do that almost every week, so he gets the perishable items in frequent, short, inexpensive shopping trips, while I occasionally go shopping and stock up on bunches of long-lasting items. We’re also a family of two in a house with a full basement, so we have plenty of space to store extra items.