Winco Haul — How’d I do?
by Katy on October 11, 2025 · 6 comments
As I mentioned yesterday, it was high time for a big ol’ Winco shopping trip. Even though I absolutely wasn’t in the mood for it. Then again, an unfortunate amount of being a functional adult is taking care of unpleasant tasks without procrastination. Which is so unfair!
Here’s the majority of what I bought. It excludes a few items from the previous photo as I scooped some things from the bulk bins for my step-mother.
I also grabbed chicken, bratwurst and potatoes, which didn’t fit in the previous photo.
And here’s the receipt:
Total for 36 items? $101.05, which is frankly less than I thought it would be. (Note that I didn’t use any coupons.) You know . . . in “today’s uncertain economic times.”
Things I didn’t buy:
• Bread, which I buy for $1 apiece from the Franz Bakery outlet.
• Paper products. I buy the 100% recycled content toilet paper from Trader Joe’s and otherwise don’t buy paper towels or napkins. We have a bidet, so we don’t actually to buy it all that often.
• Fruit, which I forage from Fred Meyer’s (Kroger) clearance shelf or area apple trees. I still have plenty of frozen strawberries from a recent Fred Meyer score.
• Eggs, as my husband recently picked some up at Costco.
• Desserts, as I can make them from scratch.
Okay, how’d I do?
Katy Wolk-Stanley
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Well, I don’t have much to contribute today except 1 big score.
Local farm market (formerly owned by Mennonites) has a HUGE egg sale going on.
$2.00 / DOZEN!!!!
DH’s jaw hit the floor when he saw how many eggs they have…and they said there was more in the back!
DH brought home 4 dozen.
For the person who lives in Bloomsburg, PA, it’s at Crest Haven on 54 between Riverside and Elysburg. IDK if they have them at the Bloomsburg location or not.
Katy, You did very well. It was worth the schlep. Unlike in some other areas, it seems like saving money on food involves quite a bit of effort. It is something we can’t do without so I exert some effort in that area but don’t worry about getting the lowest price all the time. Our Costcos are always crowded and/or involve terrible traffic because of road construction. Our local Aldi can feel dirty if you don’t go when they open.
Great job adulting despite all you are dealing with.
Amazing, as always! I’m impressed you never buy paper towels. I use them sparingly, but I do buy them.
I have Aldi, and Food4Less, which is Food4NotMuchLess. But I can get discounted gas there, which is nice. Food4Less used to have a clearance produce shelf, but it wasn’t well managed — rotten fruit, anyone? And then it disappeared.
Methinks the health dept. could’ve discovered the rotten fruit on the clearance shelf, and maybe that’s why it’s no longer there. If so, Food4NotMuchLess would’ve been in a heap o’trouble.
Katy, your cupboard won’t be bare for some time to come! Good job! (When’s supper? I’ll be right over! LOL!)
Because we have to manually enter prices into the cash register where I work, I am well aware of prices. Surprisingly, our little drug/general store is cheaper than Aldi or Walmart or the supermarkets on a lot of things, including energy drinks and cologne.
Yesterday, an HEB employee came in and bought groceries — I know this bc he was wearing his uniform shirt, and their employees get a 15% (?I think) discount. Yet, he bought from us and no doubt saved $$.
Moral to the story: you have to know where to shop and when to shop.
As an example: Our store is having a clearance sale on Dr Pepper products, including most forms of DP; 7Up, Big Red, and root beer; and people are swarming in to get those sixpacks of 16 oz. bottles for $2.99. We earlier sold completely out of 12 packs of cans for $3.99.
We have some nice and heavy off-brand paper towel rolls for 99 cents each, although some shoppers still insist on getting two rolls of Bounty for (egads!) $7. And the latter is not quite as thick as the other!
They just dropped the price of our 24-bottle cases of bottled water from $2.29 to $1.99 (yes, that’s for the whole case!), and when I tell first-time customers about this, they get out of line to get one of those cheap cases.
However, Aldi and HEB have cheaper prices on gallons of milk. So I never get milk from our store.
Likewise, Ollie’s Outlet and the dollar stores are cheaper on greeting cards –but I can’t tell our customers bc I have to tout our 40% off list price greeting card promotion. (Ergo, a $4.99 card at our store sells for $2.99, but that’s not as cheap as a 99-cent card from Ollie’s. Or the 25-cent greeting cards from a thrift shop.)
Again, you have to know where to shop and when to shop. And not every store is the best source of every product you need. (But all you NCAs knew that already, didn’t you?)
Making the grocery budget stretch these days feels like being on some kind of weird game show. I know the very few things that are less expensive at the fancy grocery store, then there’s short trips to Dollar Tree, the regular neighborhood store that issues lots of store brand coupons, Ollie’s and Aldi. And toilet paper at the drugstore, which is just about the only affordable thing there with digital coupons, and trash bags with a coupon from the hardware store.
All this does keep our total expenditure down to what we used to spend, with everything bought at one store in one visit, during pre-pandemic days, but it’s quite a trek.