How I Spent $10,242 Less at Big Box Stores in One Year.

7 years ago, I took a look at our end of year credit card statement. You know the one… where they tell you exactly how much you spent at each store? I added up all the big box stores and it blew my mind seeing our yearly spend at places like Target, Amazon and various drug stores.

I came up with a plan to reduce the amount of money I was spending in general. I also wanted my time back because I also found myself constantly going to the stores for various products we were out of.

First I went through my home and made a list (spreadsheet) of all the household stuff we bought regularly. I created something that looked like an order form. I told the entire family that we were only going to Target/Walmart once a month. I made some rules for my monthly shopping trip.

1. Only buy what's on the list.
2. Stick to the list.

For food, I would hit up a grocery store or farmers market and I would only go food shopping once a week. I found Friday was the best day for eliminating food waste.

My rules for the grocery store food hauls was this:

1. Only buy food items.
2. Stick to the list.

Each month I became more and more intentional and really thought about what we needed. I had time to do so because I knew I wouldn't allow myself to "cheat" so it was pretty comprehensive.

I did this for an entire year, and at the end, I looked at the new credit card statement against the year before and I spent exactly $10,242 less at the same stores.

This little exercise led me down the path to living a low waste lifestyle because seeing all my single use purchases each month in that basket was shocking.

I've cut the amount of items I buy by 75% because eventually I started buying reusables and I didn't need to keep buying the disposable versions. What was left from my monthly haul? Well, most of the things were household necessities that I NOW get at Good Bottle. Buying non toxic cleaner formulas was also more important to me as I was able to refill. Once we started carrying pantry items I started making some of the pantry staples part of our "monthly haul".

What do you think about this shopping style?

xoxo
Deanna