June 01, 2010

How the Gosselins Affected My Grocery Shopping

About two years ago, after being constantly asked if I watch Jon and Kate Plus 8, I finally broke down and rented the first season through Netflix. Hubby would have been happy to call it quits after the first disc, but I made him sit through the whole season. It's the only season we watched. Lots of scenes stand out in my mind and occasionally still make me roll my eyes. One scene in particular was hard for me to grasp... until now. The family went to Sam's Club and left with a flat bed full of groceries. A flat bed. We're not talking about a month's worth of groceries here or a food for a party or something along those lines. This was a typical Sam's Club outing for the family. Yes, they were a family of 10 at the time, but I just couldn't wrap my brain around it.
Then, a few weeks ago, Hubby and I compared our grocery store receipt to the online prices advertised by Sam's Club. We immediately took note of the items we need to buy at Sam's. Chicken nuggets, fish sticks, three packs of frozen pizza... OK, just writing that makes me realize we rely a lot on convenience foods. But last week I decided to take a stroll through Sam's by myself and realized even milk is cheaper there.
We haven't reached flat bed level, yet. But we're definitely buying more in bulk than we used to. It may seem like a no-brainer, but Sam's used to simply be the place we ran into for a month's supply of diapers and baby wipes. When we stopped using diapers, our trips diminished. I've never had time to do much comparison shopping. I'm all about saving a buck, though, and I'm already seeing a difference in our grocery bills (yes, I'm combining the grocery store AND Sam's bills to come to this conclusion). So, Jon and Kate, I may not have enjoyed the show, but apparently I learned a valuable lesson from you: buy in bulk!

10 comments:

MaryAnne said...

My parents frequently left Sam's Club and/or Costco with a flat bed of groceries, starting when I was 7 years old and they had 7 kids...Of course, those were the days when my parents got asked if they were running a small orphanage (true story). In fairness, my siblings and I did look quite different from one another as children, although we look pretty similar as adults.

I've always shopped at Costco for frozen and dry goods, but now we buy more and more of our everyday groceries there too, because as a family of five we can easily finish a flat of strawberries and even 5lbs of baby carrots before they go bad. And milk IS cheaper there.

Stephanie Barr said...

I only have a family of three, but I buy a great deal there, too, not only nonperishables and cleaning stuff - though definitely that - but also frozen foods for work lunch throughout the week and medicines, canned foods and drinks.

MandyE (Twin Trials and Triumphs) said...

There are certain things we buy at Sam's...they have a great price on smoked salmon, and they have really good deli meat and cheese. That's all for Mommy and Daddy, though. :) I also buy milk and eggs when I'm there, and as the girls get older, I imagine I'll shop there more.

One of these days I'm going to do a post on things I learned from the Gosselins. Some are things I do, some are things I try *not* to do...but I imagine it will be an interesting list. :)

Quadmama said...

I need to take time to go through the produce section, because, as MaryAnne pointed out, it's easy to go through a lot of fruit in one sitting in our house. I forgot about laundry supplies... we've always bought that there, too.

Stephanie said...

There are quite a few things we buy in bulk too. Rice for one thing!

Anonymous said...

I would be ALL OVER Sam's club if they had it on this island. But alas...

Kim said...

Oh, yeah. I'm a big fan of Sam's Club, and shop there once a week for the basics.

SarahMarie said...

Now that the twins are older, we find ourselves buying more and more food. My ILs belong to Sam's Club, so usually we just put our order in when they go. It's getting to be time for us to get our own membership now though.

Anonymous said...

We are only two. The joys of Sam's Club and Costco have passed us by. Sometimes when someone's brought pastries, I think of getting a Costco card.

Quadmama said...

When it was just the two of us, we used Sam's for laundry detergent and toilet paper. I think we went maybe once a month.

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