This will be a two part entry because I want to keep up with the "What We Store and How We Prep" series in this blog, but I also want to explore how we can snag inexpensive books, for those of us bookworms on a budget.
One of the more "silly" things we store in our food supply is cereal. Any parent can immediately understand why. For the whole family, cereal is yummy, has a decent shelf-life, can be filling, and is relatively easy to stockpile, if you know what you are doing.
Right now, we have nine boxes of cereal on hand. Some are Cheerios, seeing as I have itty-bitty kids in the house, two are Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, some are organic granolas, organic raisin bran, and all natural, un-frosted wheat squares. There are an additional two opened boxes of Kashi Blueberry Oat Clusters and Cheerios on the top of our fridge.
For those of you who enjoy the comfort of cereal as much as we do, here are some tricks of the trade:
1) Shop with coupons when your supermarket is having a combination sale. For example, my store will run sales where you can get $6.00 off instantly when you buy four boxes of cereal at full price of a certain brand. Say, it's Kellogg's this week, and each box at regular price runs $3.29. Times that by four, and you get $13.16, minus the $6.00 off sale, and that takes it to $7.16. Add a coupon to the mix. Most cereal coupons give you so much off of multiple boxes, which, in this case, you are buying. If you have a coupon for $2.00 off of three boxes, take $2.00 off of $7.16, and you just scored four boxes of your favorite brand name cereal for $5.16. If your grocery store doesn't do this, look for some that will.
2) Warehouse clubs often have great deals on "staple" cereals, like Cheerios. We buy the most commonly used cereals in our home this way.
3) Check scratch and dent grocery stores. I get organic cereals at a local discount grocer for $1.75 a piece. Even if they are a month or so past their best-by date, they are still good.
4) Bulk food stores often have plain cereals, like corn flakes and such, and even generic Lucky Charms, for bulk, but are stored in plastic bags instead of boxes. These too can be a good deal.
5) If you like organic cereals, but not the price, sometimes, if you look diligently, stores will occasionally put them on sale if you buy multiple boxes of a brand. These sales are worth the splurge if you are into organic food, and will often make the organic cereals competitive. I recently caught Kashi cereals on sale for $2.00 a piece if I bought three. That is cheaper than the generic line of non organic cereal. But, you have to look for them.
Now, onto another subject dear to my heart. Books. Lately, I have been devouring all the wonderful books I can find. I unfortunately love the splurge of a brand new book, and my bank account has taken a bit of a hit as a result.
That being said, I love used books, too, and have recently been enjoying books via my Kindle Touch as well. You can find both for cheap or free, with work.
For your Kindle: There are many resources for FREE Kindle books. Books on the Knob is a link that I have posted on the list to your right, and they will showcase free books worth mentioning. Also, there are lots of lists that can be emailed directly to your email account (though I don't often have the time to look at those as much), such as EReaderIQ. You can look under the Kindle Store (Amazon)'s Best Sellers lists, and they will have the Top 100 Best sellers for various genres of free books that you can peruse.
Hard copy books: Check out yard sales, thrift stores, and library book sales for treasures that often cost mere cents. Today, at my local library, I bought two self help books, a book on training a household dog, and a book about the Apollo space missions--for $1 TOTAL.
Hopefully, you've gained something from these tips. Happy shopping!
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