Spending money wisely: buying in bulk

We have finally managed to begin our journey into bulk buying our groceries. Rhonda at Down To Earth calls this practice ‘stock piling’, but whatever you call it, it makes good sense if you are wanting to save money and provide more to your family. I even have been inspired in the past by the Food Storage Made Easy blog. The obstacle for us starting out with bulk buying was finding the money to spend extra on buying in bulk. So I forgot all about it for a while. Then recently I was reading someone’s post in a forum I go to regularly, about how great buying in bulk has been for them.

On the spot, my fiance and I decided enough was enough. We were going to allocate fifty dollars in this fortnight’s grocery spend on buying something in bulk that was on sale. This is what we bought:

This isn’t the cheapest laundry powder on the shelves. Heck, I can make laundry powder myself for much cheaper! What stops me doing this is that since moving out to the country, I haven’t been able to source the borax needed for the recipe. So, at the moment, we need to buy Ecostore’s brand of laundry powder due to my fiance’s allergies. The full retail price for this powder can range between $8 to $12 per 1kg box. One box lasts us quite a long time, since we use a front loading washing machine.

Today my fiance was quick to notice that it was on sale for $6, and was able to grab six boxes! (That’s all that was left, or we would’ve bought maybe ten) So this will save us between $12-$36 in the long run. (My man and I can’t agree on what the price usually is. I say it’s $12 and he says $8). I think it’s fair to say that this means we got at least one of them for free based on the savings.

The other benefit is that we are well stocked in the home and won’t run out at the crucial time. It will save us petrol by not having to race out for this one item when it ran out at the last minute and I would’ve desperately needed it. As we get well-stocked by doing this every fortnight, we will begin to spend more each time on bulk buys.

Another thing that has been sobering for us is all this flooding we’ve had in our area. We have to shop for groceries out of our little country town, and sometimes the roads get closed off during floods. It makes good sense for us to get our home as well-stocked as we possibly can for times that we may not be able to get to the shops, or are worried we may get stuck out of town and not able to get back home.

My fiance, when married to his first wife, was a Morman. He’s an atheist now, but anyway, onto my point… One thing he loved about being a Mormon was the 72 hour kits they were encouraged to put together which included stocking up on enough batteries, torches, radio, food, water, toilet paper, etc for the preparation for emergency. We both like the idea of it, but are more keen to take it further to what Food Storage Made Easy calls the Three Month Supply. It’s not something that we as a society like to think about too often: what if your town were hit with an earthquake? What if you and/or your partner lost your jobs? Have you considered stocking up on items you use regularly?