Family Feasts for $75 a Week

While one day whining about my sometimes fruitless quest for frugalness (frugality?  I dunno), I was told to check out this book.  So I hit the library's website (libraries rock, I'll get to that in a second) and requested it.  I was pretty skeptical given that our family has self-imposed dietary restrictions that don't always mesh well with books about food.  But last night I began flipping through it and, oddly enough, I cannot put it down.  It is full of such great advice and hints on how to save money at the grocery store, how to prepare food ahead of time, and ways to better organize your pantry and grocery list in order to save the most money.  It is GREAT!  It is so great that I intend on actually paying money in order to have my own copy!  (Well, not entirely true-- I have a couple of gift cards for bookstores.  So I won't actually pay MONEY for it, but I will utilize a gift card for it.  That's still something, right?)

Back to the library.  My city's library system is great.  Maybe not the best, I don't know, but pretty freakin' awesome nonetheless.  I can access my account online and see everything I have checked out and when it's due, and renew if I need to (that often, though not always, saves me on late fees) and I can search for things and put them on hold.  They could have a wait list or they could just be at a branch an hour away, either way I can request it and when it's ready it's sent to my branch.  All from the comfort of my couch!  We try to make a library run about once a week.  We fill up a giant reusable grocery bag with my holds, anything else that looks interesting to me, a giant stack of kid books, and a few DVDs.  Yes, our library has an amazing collection of DVDs.  There is never a need to pay for a movie because you can always get it at the library.  Though sometimes we do still pay for rentals because we're Americans, we like instant gratification.  You can't necessarily get the new release on the day it comes out at the library.  Though sometimes you do get lucky, like this week I got a copy of District 9 which came out fairly recently.  Those days when you can get a new new release, your chest just swells with pride.  It's like using a double coupon on a sale item and getting it for free!

Speaking of coupons, I've been trying to figure out the best grocery store strategy.  It's been weighing heavily on my mind for a week now, and last night the aforementioned book highlighted it.  The author keeps a book listing the best prices for all her regularly used products at all the stores in the area.  That seems like A LOT of work.  But I guess it's worth a try.  I normally shop at Aldi, which does not take coupons but has incredibly low prices; Wal-Mart, which takes coupons but doesn't double them; or Kroger, which doubles coupons but has obscenely higher prices on everything else.  Now, driving a little out of my way is a Meijer, which advertises low prices and doubles coupons, and I'm thinking I might have to experiment one day and see where it falls in the grocery store spectrum.  I don't know if I'm up for shopping at multiple places in a week.  I know if you shop the ads and double coupons and all you can probably come out ahead going to a lot of places, but I'm doing this with 2 little boys and we are lucky to get through ONE store without somebody getting bored and freaking out.  I'm not sure saving money is worth the insanity it would bring to drag the kids in and out of stores all day in search of the best deal on O.J.  But my thinking is that I can visit different stores over the next few weeks and check out the prices on most used items, as the author suggested, then work out a system where I shop at a different one each week.  I don't know, I'm still working it out.  I'll let you know when I get it figured out.