This week's grocery shopping and my best deal ever!

I have a love-hate relationship with grocery shopping. I love buying yummy things for my family, I hate the cost and the time grocery shopping takes from me.

I am trying to only shop once a week, so far I am not very successful as I am continually running out to pick up something I forgot; which brings me to the second thing I am trying to do menu plan and shop with a list. I try to shop on Tuesdays as we don’t have hockey that night and at least once a month our stores have customer appreciation day and offer 10% off your order (with some restrictions and limits, of course), anything to stretch my grocery dollar is appreciated so Tuesdays work well for me.

This week – not a customer appreciation Tuesday and hello, Canada was kicking poor Norway’s butt at hockey – I shopped on Wednesday after dropping off son #2 at the rink (this is also a good time to shop and keeps me on a time limit). I had a very small list as I had shopped in the States and was hoping to get away with a very minimal shopping.

We have 3 grocery stores and I go through all the flyers and am fortunate enough that my overwrought brain can remember the regular prices of most items I purchase so I can determine what store has the lowest price any given day. This week I visited all three stores and one I had to go back a second time (and actually I have to go back tomorrow because I forgot taco seasoning and egg noodles two vital ingredients for tomorrow’s dinner). I was hoping to spend less than $100 as my grocery budget is $200/week and I spent ~$200 in the states on the weekend and $40 on Tuesday for a special hockey game meal.

I ended up spending $121.93, this included several items I wasn’t planning on such as shampoo and conditioner for my boys, I think they eat this in the shower, cereal bars and coffee. I also scored what I think is the best deal I have ever gotten.

I got 18 boxes of Playtex Tampons (16 count) for $0.12 each, yes each! The boxes were originally $5.49 and they had a 50% off sticker on them, but they had already been marked down 50% in the computer so they were ringing in at $1.12 and each box had a $1.00 off manufacturer’s coupon so I paid $0.12 each box. Less than a penny a tampon and the added bonus that I won’t have to buy any for probably the next year!