7 Easy Grocery Shopping Habits that Save Money

Lately, I’ve been doing a big monthly grocery store trip and filling it in during the rest of the month with milk, coffee, and banana runs. Three staples our house does not run without. 

This month I came in under our monthly grocery budget – by accident.

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I’d like to say I spent hours and hours combing through sales circulars and matching up Extreme Couponing quantities into a $5 cart of groceries but that didn’t happen because that’s not my style.

It’s fine if you do. I’m too lazy to create The Marshall Plan of Extreme Couponing every time I need to buy groceries.

My secret to saving money on groceries is simple. I followed the budgeting habits I know I should follow but sometimes (often) don’t. When I don't follow the spending and budgeting rules, that’s when I blow my grocery budget.  

 

7 Ways I Cut My Monthly Grocery Budget Without Really Trying

1. Keep a running shopping list in the kitchen. When I use the last of a staple item like flour, I put it on our shopping list like this magnetized shopping list on the refrigerator.  (Disclosure I am including affiliate links in this post for your convenience.) Then I just buy flour instead of all of the  ingredients I need to bake bread because I think I need them too.

Yeah I know an app would be easier to have with me at all times, but the act of writing something on paper makes me remember it better. The list on our refrigerator also keeps my husband and I from “helping” each other by accidentally buying doubles because one of us thinks we are out of something when the other one just bought it. Oops!

I tried dry canning to keep pantry pests of the an accidental double purchase of masa harina corn flour (it looks like this ). So far it is working. Learn how I oven can dry goods here.

2. I moved things around in the kitchen cupboards to see what I already have on hand instead of automatically putting those staples on my shopping list because it wasn’t in my eye line. We are trying to do this more often after last winter’s Eat From the Pantry Challenge revealed we have Out of Sight Out of Mind Disease when it comes to items in the back of our freezer and cupboards.

 

I bought a pantry shelf can organizer rack (you can learn more about it here) like this one to help with the kitchen cupboard shuffle and to organize and save space in my small kitchen. One is enough since I don't use many canned goods but is stackable if that changes in the future.

Guess what? This month I found ingredients that we kinda forgot we had. If we shift our menu a bit from family favorites we eat more often, there is a good chunk of groceries I don’t need to buy right away and I get cupboard and freezer space back!

3. Didn’t shop on auto pilot. There are some ingredients we use so often I automatically put them in my shopping cart even if they are not on my shopping list. That's when I find out I could have saved myself 20 bucks or so because I didn’t do Tip 2 and Tip 7. 

4. Pantries and stockpiles don’t save you money unless you use them. This is a little different than Tip 2.

In Tip 2, I’m talking about our daily/frequent staple ingredients – canned tomatoes, pasta, coffee, frozen backup vegetables, bread etc. I’ll call that short term storage for lack of a better term.

What I’m talking about here is the longer term type items. Warehouse club bulk buys, canned/dried garden herbs and vegetables, and homemade jam.  Stuff that it easy to forget that I have because I don’t use them often or in the case of my small kitchen, are in a separate utility room we use as pantry space where Out of Sight, Out of Mind Disease comes into play.

The results of last year’s BJ’s Warehouse shopping trip last November. I wish they’d open a store in Columbus!

5. We shop and eat seasonally.  Once I started to really read and pay attention to the weekly sales flyers I started to notice the sale cycles of various items and started to shop and eat accordingly. (I read them online using the Flipp app. I do not have a newspaper subscription)  

When I buy fresh produce according to what is on sale that week because it is in season either nationally or locally, I save a more money than if I buy a particular type of produce on whim or auto pilot. Not to mention, food tastes better when it is grown in season. Truthfully most of my grocery shopping savings comes from paying attention to and buying food on seasonal sale than with coupons.

The same goes for coupons. Despite what many people say, there are coupons for the eco friendly items my family likes to use. They generally are not issued as often or are seasonal, generally in January when everyone pledges to "get healthy" as a New Year's Resolution and around Earth Day.

In this case, I have an extra on deck to get us through to the next time I can buy it at less than full price. The biggest tip here: If I have enough in use and as a backup I do not automatically buy something if it goes on sale or has a coupon. I'll save more money not buying something I don't need to even if it is less than full price.

Before you complain like I used to that you can’t shop for food seasonally because you live in an area with snow, learn how I shop seasonally by paying attention to this list of national in season produce growing seasons It can be done!

6. I’m trying to avoid grocery shopped when I am stressed, sick, or in a mood otherwise I will shop stupid and end up spending more money than planned.  This isn’t possible all of the time. I’m trying a few things to make sure I already have something on hand when I’m tempted to run to the store and buy buffalo burgers because they are easier to cook than the stuff I have on hand.

 

• Having a few freezer meals helped more than I realized it would.  We are experimenting with making occasional extra large size dinners so we can freeze the extra.

Beef pasties (meat pie) for the win!

 

• Sometimes it is better (for me at least) to make something from scratch occasionally than buy it and be tempted by all of the yummy things I don’t need and will be tempted to buy because I’m in a mood.  For example, I don’t make all of our bread anymore but I did when we ran out. Why? I  knew if I went to the store for bread I’d probably bring home three carts worth of pumpkin spice Trader Joe Joe’s. I wasn’t in a mood. Those cookies are crack.

7. Most important: Stick to a written list. This tip circles back to Tip 1. Every time I go grocery shopping with a list in my head I end up buying a lot of extra stuff or forget something important like butter. That doesn’t happen if I have a written list either on paper or on my phone.

It seemed strange not to buy staples on auto pilot this month but I did it. It also made my shopping trip shorter which is always a plus. This is a very basic tip but I’m also bad at it. You see that pumpkin spice pancake syrup in the photo above? That was the one item not on my written list..

How to do you money on food at the grocery store? What are your tips?

Are you looking for more money saving tips, ideas, and grocery shopping hacks? Check out the following ideas - and more! - below!

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