Grocery Shopping, Then and Now: The 80s, 90s, and Beyond, My Story (pt. 2)

Other ways we saved on groceries

Deals at the back of the shelf

I began grocery shopping for a family when some stores still priced their products with stickers. The age of scanning bar codes had arrived, but was not adopted in every store just yet. When I shopped at any of these price sticker stores, I would reach to the back of a shelf to find items that had been missed in the markups and still had the old price on them. It may have only saved pennies with each item, but every penny counted for us.

The age of the coupon queen

I wasn't a coupon queen, but I did pretty well with coupons for a small-timer. We had a store that offered double (common) and triple (rare) coupon days. I was getting $1 and $2 off coupons regularly, both in the paper and magazines. One double coupon day I grabbed all of my $1 off dry cereal coupons and headed to the store. I wasn't able to use every coupon, but I did come home with 18 boxes of cereal for a grand total of 37 cents. I was ale to do the same with powdered laundry detergent coupons, too. The real coupon queens were selling or buying bundles of coupons. 

Some coupon-ers picked up leftover newspapers from stores and libraries for the coupon inserts on Monday mornings. I had a friend who went to our local library when it opened evert Monday and was able to get the day before's copies of the paper, garnering 4 or 5 sets of coupon inserts each week. This cost her nothing but time on her way to drop the kids off at school. She then paired the coupons up with sales and rebates. Her garage looked like a little store, with shelves of products she had gotten not only for free, but manufacturers paid her to take the products through rebates. My friend would donate what she could to shelters and food banks.

Most of my local stores had trays near the entrance doors where a shopper could both drop off needed clipped coupons and pick up ones that were of use. Each week I would drop off the dog food, hair dye, cosmetics or cleaning product coupons and pick up ones for cat food, some packaged foods, and some paper products. Again, not a huge savings for me, but I was helping someone else out while saving some pennies for our family.

With help I taught myself how to make all kinds of foods in the kitchen

Just after arriving in our new town, my sister-in-law showed me that baking bread was not as mysterious as I'd previously though. I hadn't tried baking my own bread since an unsuccessful attempt in college. Following a good recipe and doing the kneading made all the difference in my loaves.

I also learned how to make yogurt. I've been successfully making our family's yogurt now for 12 years, all using descendants from the original starter.

Many years ago, my husband brought home a copy of Laurel's Kitchen from the free table at work. In that cookbook I found recipes for homemade flour tortillas and soybean sandwich spread, among others. I use those recipes to this day.

When peanut butter prices skyrocketed, my two daughters were in high school. Sunflower seeds were still quite reasonable in price. I used my blender to make sunseed butter. My daughters liked it well-enough for daily sandwiches for about a year in high school.

I used the local library to find many new recipes. The ones that my family really enjoyed I copied onto notecards to reference through the years. One of our favorites is for a country French marinated lentil salad. It's super frugal and a delicious way to serve legumes in the hot months of summer.

Keeping foods

Somewhere in our early years of owning our own home, we bought a food dehydrator and the first of our stand-alone freezers. We've since added another stand alone freezer, plus we now have our old fridge/freezer in the garage, for 4 freezer spaces total.

We've had stand-alone freezers for most of our marriage. We currently have 2 freezers and 2 refrigerator/freezer combos. I have kept some sort of vegetable garden every summer of our marriage. And all but one summer we've had fruit trees where we lived. We currently have 4 apple trees, 1 plum tree, 2 cherry trees, 4 pear trees, 2 fig trees, a strawberry patch, 8 blueberry bushes, 2 raspberry patches, several currant bushes, several rhubarb plants, a small buy growing cranberry patch, and a blackberry patch.We also have a lot of competition for all of this fruit, raccoons, bunnies, squirrels, mountain beavers, and coyotes (coyotes will eat low-hanging fruit if they're hungry enough). In addition to growing all of this fruit, we also forage for additional blackberries every summer. We have a couple of local spots that are good for this, one a park near a small lake nearby, and the other the grounds at the local elementary tare school. Summer of 2020, we saw a lot of folks foraging for blackberries. I can and freeze as much produce as I have energy to do each summer and fall. This last fall was not great for me for putting away produce. I hope this next fall will go better.

Where I shop today

Our house is about an 8 to10-minute drive to the major north-south highway that connects the cities of western Washington state. Every budget grocery shopping venue is along this highway. You can drive into the towns off the highway and find other grocery stores. But most of those tend to be more expensive. So, for the most part, I grocery shop along the highway. 

To our north, just next to Home Depot, there is an ethnic market where I find fabulous deals on produce. Closer to our house, there's Walmart Neighborhood Market (not a super center, but a grocery store). Walmart is in the same strip as Value Village. So I'll often hit one while I hit the other. Directly across the street is Grocery Outlet (a salvage store). In the same strip as Grocery Outlet is Dollar Tree. Dollar Tree is hit or miss when it comes to groceries. Package sizes are now quite small. But I occasionally find something I want from there. Boxed crackers at $1.25 are still a good deal at Dollar Tree. Since I'm usually going in to Grocery Outlet, a pop into Dollar Tree doesn't cost me anything but a few minutes of my time.

There are several Asian markets on the highway near the Walmart/Grocery Outlet shopping area. Asian markets are a great source for dried spices, specialty condiments used in Asian cuisine, some produce items, rice in large bags, whole tapioca pearls (I make tapioca pudding with the pearls, much less expensive than the little boxes of cracked tapioca sold in supermarkets) and tea. 

Further down the highway is Trader Joe's. I don't shop at Trader Joe's as much as I used to, but there are still some deals there, especially if you have particular dietary needs or want a particular pre-made food for a special occasion. I love Trader Joe's frozen croissant dough. They bake up into the freshest, crispiest croissants, a favorite treat for my birthday or Mother's Day. We had a Sprouts just across the street from TJ for several years. They went out of business at that location during the shutdowns. That was truly unfortunate, as I found a lot of great produce deals at Sprouts. 

Just a few blocks further is Chefstore, the restaurant supply. We discovered this restaurant store 25 years ago. At that time, it was one of few that would sell to the public. You had to pay cash, then. Only businesses could write checks there. Now, like every other place, they take credit from anyone. I shop at Chefstore about once every 3 months. It's where I buy pizza and block cheese, cases of raisins, 25 and 50-lb sacks of grains/flour/sugar, 12.5 lb bags of popping corn, eggs by the 15-dozen case, 1-lb blocks of butter (not in sticks, but blocks), 25-lb bags of carrots, large canisters of spices, 2-lb bags of dried yeast, gallon jugs of vinegar, soy sauce, molasses, lemon juice, olive oil and vanilla flavoring, and in some years, 88-count cases of oranges. In the past, I've also bought bacon ends and pieces, 35-lb boxes of cooking oil, 5-lb bags of frozen vegetables, and ingredients for making a Greek dinner at home at Chefstore. Since we have never had a Costco membership, this business supply does what I'd want from Costco.

At the end of my shopping route is WinCo and the large seasonal produce stand, Country Farms. WinCo is well-known for its very large bulk bin section and general low prices on everything they carry. It's my favorite store for several items, not just because of price, but their quality is better on some store brand products than the same product at Walmart. And just after WinCo is Country Farms, the produce stand. I used to shop here weekly when my kids were in high school. It was right on that daily route. I probably only get down here once a year now, for their end-of-season sale on long-keeping produce items, such as cabbage, winter squash, and pie pumpkins. 

I also occasionally shop off the highway at Fred Meyer, a Kroger affiliate. Fred Meyer's store is cleaner inside than any of my budget options, but their prices are generally higher than my other stores. They do, however, send out coupons for free items one every month or two. I received another coupon for a free bag of salad just this week. If I have recently done a lot of shopping at their store (in November and December shopping for holidays, or during the gardening season buying supplies), I can rack up significant cash-off on gas for the car. We were recently in a nearby town that has much cheaper gas than ours here. We stopped in at the Fred Meyer there and used my cash-off of 30 cents/gallon and saved big for that tank of gas (savings on 30 cents/gallon plus lower gas prices in general in that town). I tend to spend more on non-food items at Fred Meyer than food. I buy stuff for the garden there every spring and summer. It's the only place nearby that sells chicken manure, and seed packets are always buy one/get one free. This is also where I get my potting soil in early spring for starting seeds and organic fertilizers to use throughout the gardening season. I tend to prefer Fred Meyer for garden stuff over Home Depot, which would be my only other nearby gardening venue.

I guess you could say that my car has become one of my greatest tools in saving money on groceries.

In September, we added a new place to get some of our meat, beef from a small-operation rancher. The beef is fabulous quality, supports a family and not a corporation, and is a reasonable quantity to be delivered at one time. However, it's a lot more expensive per pound. But, but, but . . .the quality is so good, I'm not sure we could go back to eating supermarket beef again,

My mother would occasionally make a stop at a produce market after doing her shopping at a supermarket, but she would never have shopped 4 or more stores in a morning as I have done. She used her time differently that I do. Part of that is I enjoy this sort of challenge, to save as much as I can on groceries. I don't think that aspect of shopping appealed to my mother in the same way as it does me. The other aspect is it's simply harder for a family to live on one income now (and in the last couple of decades) than it was for my mother's generation. And I fear it is becoming more difficult for this next generation. 

This isn't the end of the Grocery Shopping, Then and Now set of posts. My husband and I are now part of the oldest generation in both of our families. We've adapted to many new technologies.  For instance, my husband signed up for biometric identification shopping this fall to get a free $5 coupon at Whole Foods. To be clear, this wasn't the implant thing, but a wave of a handprint linked to your credit card. Yet, there have been other technological advances that we've been slow to take on. My kids are the ones who are trying new things. But their story isn't so straightforward. It's really the tale of two income levels, the wealthier and the less wealthy in the Millennials and younger. The divide seems to hit them at every turn. I'll talk about both poles of grocery shopping for the next generation in posts about my kids' shopping next week.

Grocery Shopping, Then and Now: The 80s, 90s, and Beyond, My Story, (pt. 1)

This will be a two-parter. Here's the first part. The second part will be posted some time tomorrow.

While my grandmother and mother focused on menu planning and shopping from those menus, I was all about the deal. Working hard at saving money would mean we could afford the American dream of home ownership sooner rather than later.

When my husband and I married in the late 1980s, we each had our own car. We also had a joint bank account, so there was no need for my husband to pay any bills for me or to give me an allowance. When I first began grocery shopping, I shopped once per week, just as my mother always had. At that time, you could pay for groceries with either cash or a personal check. The "teller's booth" near the front of the store disappeared sometime in the early 80s. Instead you would write your check at the cash register, holding up the line of multiple impatient people behind you. Many supermarkets adopted "cash-only" lines to ease tempers of the impatient. By the 90s, credit cards were accepted at most grocery stores, speeding up those checkout lines.

In my early marriage years, I was not nearly as organized as my mother or grandmother had been with their shopping. The luxury of having two cars meant I could run to the store to get something I needed whenever it was convenient for me. My shopping lists were very incomplete. I would often decide what I would serve for dinners that week, while in the store walking up and down the aisles. And then came the baby! 

Slashing our grocery spending 

When our oldest was a baby I discovered that I could save more if I read the weekly ads for all of the stores in the area and buy only the loss leaders at each store, often visiting 4 grocery stores in a morning. We had 6 grocery stores within a short drive of each other. Until this point, I had been spending about $70 per week on groceries and household needs for a small family of 3. 

The first week I shopped only loss leaders (and then built my meals out of what I bought -- dubbed the pantry principle), I spent $30. I went from spending $70 per week to spending $30 per week. And I maintained that low grocery budget for many, many years. I wasn't just buying enough to feed us for a week. I was stockpiling excesses with loss leaders. Our meals changed in content, but not nutrients. We ate more beans and whole grains and switched to the less expensive meats that were often featured as sale items. 

One thing I discovered in those days (80s and 90s) -- the more upscale the store, the better the loss leaders. The more budget-oriented the store, with overall low prices, the fewer stellar deals on the ad's front page. I balanced this by getting the great loss leaders at the upscale stores, then filling in around the edges at the budget stores.

Another thing about grocery shopping back in the 80s -- some stores still had baggers who would also push your cart out to your car for you. With a baby on my hip, having someone push my groceries to the car then load them into the trunk was an invaluable service.

The mega-supermarkets, carrying all kinds of house and garden items, in addition to groceries, were popularized about the time my son was a baby.

Aside from the first year of marriage, we've lived in the suburbs of a major city our entire time together. Suburbs come with lots of shopping choices. I've been able to shop at regular grocery stores, natural food stores, restaurant supply stores, produce stands, u-pick farms, farmers' markets, bakery thrift stores, ethnic stores, and now online to round out my budget grocery shopping. We also had a Costco nearby in the time when they would allow a non-member to shop by paying a surcharge on all purchases. We took advantage of this until they changed their policy. Neither my mother nor my grandmother could have imagined such an extensive list of places to shop as we have now. 

Movin' to the big city (or the suburb of a big city)

My husband suffered a 10-month period of unemployment /underemployment when he was laid off from his job at about the two-year mark in our marriage. The city where we were living was in a downturn. After a couple of months of job-seeking with nothing that would actually support our family of three, we decided to move to a part of the country where the economy seemed to be doing better. It would still take many more months for my husband too obtain a permanent job with benefits. 

vexels.com

Finding free food

During these months of searching and waiting, we moved into a duplex that had several fruit trees in the shared yard. The other occupant had no interest in the fruit and neither did the owners of the units. That first summer we had more cherries, plums, apples, and crabapples than we could possibly eat. I canned and froze as much as I could. In September we discovered a large patch of wild blackberries nearby, and thus began our annual foraging for blackberries. That summer and fall I mastered the fruit pie. In July, breakfast was cherry pie and milk/coffee. In August, we ate plum pie twice per day. Beginning in September, we ate apple and blackberry pies, cobblers, and crisps daily. We barely heated our apartment that fall and winter. I kept a box of apples in a corner of our bedroom closet, up against an outside wall -- the coolest spot in the apartment. These apples kept through the beginning of February. I had a large produce bin in the kitchen fridge packed with more apples. Our fresh apple supply lasted until spring.

I began making jams and jellies. My stepmother and father came to visit mid-summer that year. My stepmother said she was done with canning and making jams, so she brought me a couple of cases of canning jars and rings. With all of this fruit, I hardly spent anything on groceries for that summer of little income.

When we relocated to this new area, we downsized our cars. We sold my car to pay for the move and shared my husband's car for a decade. We lived in a duplex that had convenient access to public transportation, taking my husband into the city and back every day. So I had free use of the one car for the entire week. This allowed me to grocery shop at numerous stores per week. Gas prices were decent back then, which meant I wasn't as concerned about traveling to stores further away if it meant I could save a bundle on food and household items. 

Our area of town was growing rapidly. New stores opened every year. With these openings came blockbuster deals. My son was a toddler and our daughters weren't born yet. With just one child in tow, I stood in line for all of the store grand openings. In exchange for my patience on these days, I received free packages of ice cream, bacon, hot dogs, cheese, eggs, canned tuna, loaves of bread, donuts & coffee. Stores were eager to quickly garner a large share of the market as the town grew. And I took advantage of every opportunity to save on groceries that I could. 

There was something of a grapevine in my toddler son's library storytime group. One week, a mother told me that a local grocery store would be putting all of their unsold pumpkins out for free the day after Halloween. Believe me, I was up and with my son before the store opened that November 1. We brought home four 10-lb pumpkins, all free. I cooked up the pumpkins, one every 2 or 3 weeks, making soups and more pies, plus freezing enough puree to serve as vegetable side dishes through winter. We would continue to collect free pumpkins every year right after Halloween for over 20 years.

You may be wondering, "why didn't she just go get a job so they could spend more on groceries?" I did work and have worked very part-time for our entire marriage. But my priority has always been taking care of the family and home. This was our choice as a couple. From the start we knew it would be difficult to afford what our parents could on one income. But we were up to the challenge. In fact, after 8 years of marriage, including an almost 1-year unemployment, relocation to another state on our dime, paying off school loans, and the birth of 3 children, we had saved up enough money to put over 40% down on the house we live in today. Sometimes I have wondered if the sacrifices we made were worth it. I think they were. We got to have the life we wanted, despite not having all of the luxuries our contemporaries had.

Stay tuned for part two tomorrow!