The Vicky Challenge. Look in different places.

My Vicky Challenge went pretty well last week.
Some of the things I included:

I cut Andy's hair which  is $45 locally.

Made lunches and fishing day picnic $150.

I made a huge amount of pumpkin soup in the crockpot. Froze portions. I will say $50 savings based on ready made soups in the supermarket.

That was my lunch most days.

I made 36 large pumpkin scones. These are $3 each at our local bakery.  $90. Ridiculous I know!

Made 45 serves of wholesome baby food. Saving $100.

This is $465 right there.
There are lots of little bits and pieces that saved too. But they are the main things.

I find it really interesting to find out what things cost! Mimi made a good point the other day when she commented about the wool wash,  how beautiful it smells and what a good job it does on woollens. Now you could take your blankets etc to the dry cleaners instead. I wonder what that would cost? Similarly when I wash the quilt or something like that... people pay a lot to have things professionally cleaned. I need to take notice of just how much these things cost as I always am happy to do these things myself. You save much more than you know most probably!


This weeks "extra savings" is to look in new places in the supermarket. I love to look in entirely new places and try different shops, wholesalers, spice markets and so on as many times we can find a huge price difference. But today I am just talking about in your usual shops where you often buy groceries.
My most regular place at the moment is our local Woolworths supermarket. When Aldi is closer to us it will be Aldi.

We all are creatures of habit. Most of us even go the same way around the supermarket every time and do things in the same order. It is easy to go onto "automatic pilot" and sail around looking in the usual places, getting the same things.
Every now and then I like to take a heap more time and REALLY LOOK. Often you will find the same things in different departments, in different packaging and at different prices!
For example chicken. Chicken is in several departments. First there are the cooked chickens. They are the rotisserie chickens and very good and fresh in our supermarket.  It is currently mostly cheaper to buy a cooked chicken than a raw one!
Then there is a section of roasted items and you can buy part of a cooked chicken.
There is raw chicken in the deli department, plus cold roast segments, sliced pressed chicken, crumbed chicken...
Then there is the meat department. You can get all kinds of cut up chicken plus whole or marinated whole birds to roast.  Mostly it it cheaper to buy a whole chicken than two breast fillets, for me in my location at least.
Then there is the freezer apartment. You can get every type of chicken imaginable, fresh, roasted, sliced, crumbed...
Then there is canned chicken.
Usually in our supermarket the raw chicken in the deli department is much cheaper than the exact same thing in the meat department. Just wrapped differently.

Some of my best ever meat buys have been from the freezer department. Which means I missed out for a long time as mostly I never even looked in the freezer department!

Helen told me that she got ready chopped veggies marked down so cheaply it was cheaper to buy them than cut her own.
That was a !!! moment as I never look in pre chopped veggies. I assume they are going to be much more expensive. And they are UNLESS they are clearing them!

These are the kind Helen got and they were so cheap they beat everything else! Who would have thought? So now I check every time.

So lesson learned! Now I look in the prepared vegetables and also frozen vegetables! You never know!

Our supermarket has several areas to look at regularly for mark downs. But it is tricky. Bakery type items are usually on two special shelves in the store. But sometimes they are marked down right where they were put out in the first place, sometimes they are moved so everyone sees them. Sometimes both. I look in each spot.
Some fruit and veggies are bagged up for fast sale. Big bags of anything are usually $3 and sit at the end of one of the rows. But sometimes they are in some random place, maybe someone else was doing the markdowns? So I look right around.

Like chicken the fish is in several areas and for vastly different prices.
Cheeses and meats are also something that varies so much one area to another.
Something like ham can be $40 a kilo if packaged and sliced but about half that in the deli department and half or less again if you buy a whole piece of ham and cut it up yourself.
A piece of beef or corned beef roasted at home will give you lunch meat at a fraction of the cost of buying actual lunch meat.

I have had some real surprises and you never know what you will find. But look in the places you never look and include the places you assume will be more expensive. Things change...  prices change, they move things! And ask. "What is the best time to come in for meat mark downs?" and such questions. I have found they just tell you and are really helpful. One person in the meat department told me the usual routine is mark downs at 2 pm and again nearer closing. So I shop at 2 pm and yes they re usually making down! It isn't a coincidence I am there at mark down time. I plan my day around it.
Having time to look when you shop can be a huge saver. The things I find! It is amazing.  What a difference it makes!

How did you save last week? As we start a new week I have soup going and we are doing things around the house as it is a public holiday for the Queens Birthday. And the sun is shining even though it is really cold!  Have a lovely day. xxx