why do you keep a storecupboard/stocked freezer etc

maman

laurel7172 wrote: »

It's a natural consequence of stocking up on things when they're cheap...

I agree with that. In theory, I can then 'shop' economically from my freezer/storecupboard each week and only buy bread, milk and a few veg. The trouble is when I go shopping I see other things that are on offer/whoopsied....

Kaz2904

Like many others, I stockpile when things are on special offer. I find that it cuts the cost of things. Occasionaly we will run out of things but only when DH uses up the last of something and doesn;t tell me or write it down.
Every so often I insist that we run down the freezer so that I can defrost it but I like to have a stocked baking store for when there's something needed.
I always buy washing liquid when cheap and don't need to buy it every month.
I do need to get the bill down so am going to investigate further the homebrew situaton. DH tends to pop to asda for wine and buy lots of stuff so if we have wine here he won't do that (I hope). It would be better if he didn't drink so much but I can't see that happening!

thriftlady_2

I'm not sure if I've understood the question, I don't stockpile but how can you cook if you don't have a well-stocked store cupboard?

I just keep everything I'm likely to need for the kind of things we like to eat and that I like to cook. This means we always have a variety of grains, pulses, tinned fish, tinned tomatoes/passata, spices, oils, vinegars, dried fruit, nuts and baking ingredients in the cupboards.

In the garage I keep a sack of spuds in the autumn and winter, onions, garlic, apples and jars and jars of homemade preserves.

In the freezer I like to have peas and sweetcorn always, berries, various cuts of meat and fish.

In the fridge there is always cheese, bacon, yogurt, milk, eggs and fruit and veg.

With all this I can make many kinds of meals;)

I don't think I've ever seen 'whoopsies' that I've wanted to buy. They never seem to be for things I use.

jenster

MrsCook wrote: »

when i do a weekly shop i tend to buy a little bit extra so i either dont need so much the next week or so that i can just do 3 out of 4 shops.

one of the reasons i like to have extra;s so i can have one week a month free of shopping like mrs c . ok i might have to get the odd loaf of bread/pint of milk that week but i get that local and if i spend a fiver/ tenner that week saves on the 80/100 that i know i can easily spend the supermarket

newlywed

I stock up a bit because OH doesn't do the shopping so if I was ill for a few days, I like to know there are things we could eat without going further than the local co-op for milk.

Plus towards the end of the month I always seem to run out of money before payday so I try to plan for the month to make sure we have the main meat/tins etc in the cupboard to last us.

Olliebeak

I'm ridiculous for not hanging onto money thorughout the month - that's MY main reason for keeping a storecupboard/well-stocked freezer.

Also, I had many years, when we had very little money at all while bringing up three growing kids, due to an extremely work-shy OH - I'll never be in that position again.

mummysaver

I have huge stockpiles Slowandsteady! My oh and kids and ex and friends mostly find it funny too! It simply worries me that we would starve if for some reason we suddenly had no money, right now we could probably feed the entire village if Armageddon happened!

I too buy stuff when it is on offer, so this naturally creates stock piles - napolina toms were 4 for £1 a while ago, as tinned toms are something I use a lot then I bought plenty, hopefully they will last till the next good offer, the same with baked beans, I only buy these when on offer, I do make my own, but sometimes it's just nice to open a tin! Washing powder is something I have lots of too, usually keep the big boxes in the downstairs loo, which is a bonus as they make it smell nice! I stock up on toiletries when there are offers, with four kids we get through a fair amount of shampoo and soap and deodorant, and that's before you consider any other stuff like body lotion and shower gels!

I have a meat freezer that is used for the whole/half animals I buy, a veg freezer that is full of homegrown/donated/whoopsied stuff, an upright freezer that has hm ready meals and things like whoopsied cream and half price butter, a cupboard full of flour and dried pulses and beans, a baking cupboard, a tinned cupboard, a fridge freezer full of fresh stuff and things like frozen peas and ice cream. At the end of my bed I have two large wicker trunks full of toiletries, my downstairs loo has spare boxes of washing powder, and the understairs cupboard is usually full of loo rolls, currently it is housing lots of kitchen roll that my oh bought home from work as it was about to be binned as it was an overstock! Out in my garage I also have a sack of potatoes and a large bag of onions and one of carrots. Oh, I also have a well stocked medicine cupboard, though I don't really stockpile, more one in use and one or two spare - doesn't take long to get through a box of paracetamol if we all have colds!

Anyway I don't think you're nuts, well not any more than I am! I like to think of it as keeping a good supply of everything and saving money by buying the things I will use when they are on offer.

[Deleted User]

I was brought up during the 1940s-50s when women shopped everyday not just because it was the norm but because often what was in the shops on Monday wouldn't be there on Tuesday so you bought what you could and stored it as best as possible .My late Mum had two permanantly hungry boys plus me.Rationing carried on for 9 years after the war so things always seemed to be in short supply.She never owned a fridge or freezer or for that matter a washing machine or microwave but she managed to bring us all up reasonably healthy and if not full then we never actually went hungry. Right from when I married in 1962 I had a small store cupboard of tinned stuff 'just in case' of natural disasters like unemployment or sickness.As the children came along I always kept odds and ends 'just in case' of suddenly having to produce extra for their friends at tea time.Then they flew the nest, and it was just me and my OH.
I still kept a small stash 'just in case' that there were visitors or he fancied something different .Sadly six years ago my OH died and I still had my 'just in case' store. My mobility deterioated slightly, so my store came in handy when the weather was bad and I couldn't get out to shop. A couple of months ago I did a stock check of my cupboards and fridge freezer.I was shocked at how much my stores had grown.Usually by my 'automatic' shopping.You know ,wander round MrT's or Sainsbugs and think 'Oh that looks a bargain, or that's nice' and into the trolley it would go. After taking stock of my stuff I realised that I actually had several hundred pounds of food in the cupboards and freezer.I was still shopping for two and there was only me to buy for.So at the beginning of September I decided to go on the GC challenge.I have cut back on my weekly spends of normally £45-50 per week to £30.00 per week and I am still eating through the stuff I have stored 'just in case'.
I am hoping to get it right down to a better level by Christmas ,the saving of £80.00 per month is going towards a longer holiday next year for myself and the family. My 'just in case 'stores will be reduced dramatically, as if you think about it it really is 'dead money' sitting in the cupboards 'just in case':)

CCP

Like thriftlady, I keep a well-stocked store cupboard simply because I like cooking and need to have the necessary bits to hand. I tend to stock up on stuff I use a lot when it is on special offer (like several other people on this forum I currently have a cupboard full of Napolina tinned tomatoes ), and I buy things like pasta and loo rolls in bulk simply becuase they're cheaper that way. (The loo rolls are not for cooking with, BTW!)

I like to think that my fondness for stocking up at this time of year is a genetic inheritance from my generations of farming ancestors, for whom it was essential for survival, but it probably isn't really. For the same reason I am deeply jealous of people like mummysaver who have a freezer just for meat - that's probably just because I'm greedy, though!

Tish_P

I stock up on food, toothpaste, washing powder and other essentials so that if life suddenly gets really busy and we can't do a big shop for a while we can keep going on the contents of the cupboards/freezer for ages! Our kitchen's small so there are space constraints but I've always got tinned tomatoes, coconut milk for curries, tinned and dried beans and lentils, bacon and veg in the freezer, loads of pasta, rice, couscous, noodles, porridge oats, herbs and spices, flour and so on.

I thought this was a fun quiz about "stocking up" and your personality - despite the above, I think I'm usually a bit of an underbuyer!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gretchen-rubin/quiz-are-you-an-over-buye_b_190170.html