Home Storage:  Why Not Go Shopping Just Once A Year?

 Also see:  [Best Price Box] [Food Storage]

   There are so many benefits to reducing the number of times you visit a store for sundries, paper products, and toiletries.  Every trip eliminated saves time, hassle, decision-making, and money.  Why not make a yearly trip to the store and purchase all the items you will need for a whole year?  It is easy and ever so simple.  

    How do you begin?  Take a lined sheet of paper (or use the inventory form found in Chapter 14, "Home Storage", of the "House of Order" Handbook) and do an inventory of your cupboards.  Prepare the sheet of paper with a large left hand column and nine smaller columns on the right hand side (as seen in the example below).  Walk from the kitchen, to the laundry room, to the bathrooms, and on around the rest of your home.  Down the left hand side of the paper list every item which you regularly use and which could be bought for a year's worth of time.  For instance, you can buy cleanser, toilet paper, kleenex, over-the-counter medications, cold remedies, ziploc bags, and many others items just once a year.  It helpful to note the size of each item for this is the beginnings of comparison shopping which will allow you to save even more money.  Skipping a column, note how many of each item you have on hand in the fourth column. 

    Next, list the number of items which you think you will need for a year's time in the third column.  Subtract column "Number Needed" from column "Number on Hand" to figure column "Number to Buy".  The first time you do this, it will be a guessing game at best, but with practice you will get very good at knowing how much of an item you use in a year's time.

    Estimate how much each item will cost.  Again, with practice and use of the Best Price Box, you know for sure what a good price is, but for now a reasonable estimate will do.  Take column "Number to Buy" and multiple it by column "Proposed Cost Each" to figure "Proposed Cost Total".  Now you are ready to go shopping.

    The first time you do this "once a year" shopping you will find it best to cherry pick.  This practice saves you the most money in the shortest shopping time possible.  List the items you are interested in purchasing, along with their size on another lined sheet of paper or use the "cherry picking" form in Chapter 14, "Home Storage", of the "House of Order" Handbook.  Delegating your stewardships to someone else, go alone, without your purse or wallet, to three of your favorite stores.  At the first store, price each item which you are interested in buying and record that price on your "cherry picking" sheet (see example below).  Go the second store and do the same, and then the third store.  Usually by this time, you will need to return to your other stewardships.  Go home, circle the prices which are best at each of the three stores and plan another shopping trip tomorrow.  Go to the first store and buy the items, in the quantities you need, which are cheapest at that store.  Do the same with the second store and the third.  You have now visited three stores, purchased items at each at the cheapest price and are ready to return home and put them away.                                                       

Each and every item which has been purchased should be dated.  This can be done with a permanent marking pen or with a  date stamp and stamp pad.   This allows you to rotate your items when you make next year's purchases. 

    Don't worry about storage space before you shop.  Just go, buy, and when you get home, you will be amazed how easy it is to fit some of the items in that cupboard and some under that bed and others on that shelf.  When you are all done, you will find you have time, lots of time which can be spent doing other things besides buying shampoo again, toilet paper again, and cleanser again.

Find more helpful ideas in the "House of Order" Handbook, Chapter 14, "Home Storage".