Pantry Tips
Buy Smaller Amounts

Do you have a stuffed pantry and nothing to eat?

Buying smaller amounts of food will help your kitchen, your waistline and your whole life. Here is why:

a) It costs less. You can compare the unit price with your price book and see. The bigger quantities are not always less.

b) They take up less space in your pantry. Why should you have to buy more cabinet space and have food stacked up everywhere? Isn't that what the store is for?

c) You won't get tired of eating the same thing day after day.

d) They take up less refrigerator space and since the amount is smaller it will be in your refrigerator for less time. This will keep your refrigerator cleaner and smelling better.

e) It is very difficult to get all the food out of the bottom of tall containers. I had a tall jar of strawberry jam. It seemed to take forever to get to the bottom. Every time I wanted some my spoon wasn't long enough to get to the bottom of the jar and I ended up with jam on my hand. What a mess. The next time I bought a shorter jar of jam. This applies to every item you buy.

f) If you buy large packages of meat and you don't cook it all right away you will have to take it out of the package, repackage it into smaller amounts using expensive wrap. I would rather just buy the right size at the store. They already have it wrapped. I just put it into the freezer if I am not going to cook it in the next day or so. That is so much easier than dealing with all the repackaging.

g) You will eat less. I tend to want to eat all that is there so I have fewer leftovers. I just don't like the mess. By buying less at the front end I eat less at the back end. My kids convinced me to buy a big gallon of ice cream the other day. They said it was cheaper. The gallon was $5. The quart was $3. So I did get more ice cream for the money. The problem is that since I have a lot of ice cream now, I am eating a lot of ice cream. I basically just eat it until it's gone. If I had a smaller amount I would be eating a lot less. My health is more important than the cost savings of food I really should not be eating that much of anyway.

h) Smaller quantities are easier to carry. Most people would rather just carry a few small bags of groceries than a lot of heavy bags.

i) It is a lot work dealing with a massive amount of food. When I was married my wife always bought most of our food at one of the membership discount stores. I suppose it was somewhat cheaper to do this, but she or I never really did an actual cost analysis to make sure it was cheaper.

I know that it was much harder to do it this way. She would insist that we all go. She wanted me to help with the carrying and the paying. It took hours to go through that gigantic store. She insisted on going down every aisle, just in case.

We had to push those huge carts full of monstrous boxes and cans of food. By the end the cart was so heavy it could barely be pushed.

We would spend $200 to $400 at a time all on food that would not be eaten for months or maybe years. To me that was so demoralizing, to go to the store, spend hours there, and hours unloading and putting it all away trying to fit it into the house.

We would have to repackage everything into smaller containers. The refrigerator would be packed. The basement freezer would be packed. The pantry cabinets would be so full the doors wouldn't close. The basement shelves would be full. There would be food stacked on the kitchen floor in all the corners. Our house looked like a warehouse.

Then there wouldn't be anything to eat. We'd have to go out to eat.

Buy the smaller cans, cartons and packages. Buy bottles or cans of soda, not liter bottles. You just end of drinking a lot more soda and everyone knows that is not healthy.

Buying smaller containers of food as much as possible seems counter intuitive at first because everyone says to buy in bulk. But buying in bulk only works in certain circumstances.

If you are preparing food for dozens of people or if you have a lot of kids for instance or if you have a huge pantry and really enjoy dealing with lots of food.

Most people don't enjoy spending lots of time on food. They are better at dealing with smaller amounts of everything including food for their pantry.

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