This Month's 2025 Grocery Spending – September

 

After a successful two month pantry challenge in July and August I approached my grocery shopping this month with a carefully crafted plan – a list!  I had my list mapped out by the stores I planned to shop at and with winter readiness in mind as well.  I was ready!

 

During the past two months I had made a few dents in the deep freezer.  The kitchen refrigerator and freezer were looking pretty good too.  I had used up a few items that had been languishing, gave away and donated some food, did some meal prepping along the way all to make sure and stave off as much potential food waste as possible.  At the beginning of this month the crisper drawer was pretty empty as I had run the refrigerator down to the bare minimum.  The chickens are keeping me well supplied with eggs now so I had that well handled, but the dairy choices were getting pretty slim.

 

Needless to say, I was craving a Costco rotisserie chicken in a very big way, but vowing not to make any meat purchases this month I put that idea on hold.  It made it much easier when I got to Costco and discovered they were doing some remodeling so there were no rotisserie chickens to be had anyway.  Bullet dodged!  However, straight out of the chute and without even thinking, I picked up a package of uncured pepperoni for pizza (oops!) as well as some diced canned tomatoes I found at a very good price (50¢ per can) at Grocery Outlet.  I put the tomatoes in the LTFS and used the pepperoni for meal prepping pizza for the freezer.  I also grabbed a jar of mayonnaise on sale for $2.99 at Fred Meyer to add to my LTFS replacing one I had removed from there to use for potato salad and macaroni salad as well as some salad dressings I made this summer.

 

I forgave myself for the pepperoni purchase and got busy next by refilling the kitchen freezer and the deep freezer with a bonanza of frozen vegetables I bought on sale at Albertsons for 99¢ a package!  I picked out fifteen packages of various veggies that I really enjoy eating – peas, corn, green beans, vegetable blends and a lot of broccoli florets.  After refilling the veggie bin in the kitchen freezer I repackaged and vacuum sealed the rest and tucked them away in my deep freezer.  I was super happy to get that buy on vegetables.  Loss leaders for the win!

 

Costco haul!

During the past two months I had put together quite a list for Costco so that ended up being my next shopping trip.  I wanted to get one of their large bags of frozen berries for my smoothies which I ended up dividing and using my vacuum sealer to repackage the majority of and put away in the deep freezer.  I was able to get almost everything on my list, but some items were not available as they had a little less inventory on the floor while they are updating the store.  I had priced facial tissues at the stores so when I got to Costco and discovered their large 240ct Kleenex boxes were on sale (10 boxes/$16.99) I couldn’t pass that up.  I had initially hoped to add four boxes of store brand 160ct to my stock whenever I found a good deal, but the ten pack with more tissues per box at Costco was exactly the price I was looking for so I snapped it up.  I should be well supplied far into 2026 before I’ll need to buy more.

 

Digital coupon offers led me back to Fred Meyer to pick up a bag of delicious plums as well as three jars of peanut butter for 99¢ a jar, haven’t seen that price in a good while, and two 80 count boxes of unscented dryer sheets for $1.99 each.  I put the peanut butter away in my LTFS as I tend to give it away to anyone in need and I didn’t have any on the shelf for that purpose.  I put the dryer sheets away in the linen closet and shouldn’t need to buy anymore of those for at least two years.

 

My next trip a week and a half later was Winco for fresh dairy and a couple produce items as well as a couple jars of green olives, one for now and one for later.  I don’t consider green olives a “need”, but I do enjoy them especially on my salads, so since I had wiggle room in the budget I restocked.  The subject of nachos had come up one day so I also picked up a large bag of tortillas chips that were on sale.

 

We also found that Albertson’s is now stocking and selling Hero low carb bread products and they are really good.  They are expensive, but the quality ingredients and the taste are enough for me to justify the cost.  I stopped in at Albertson’s on my way home from Winco and picked up a loaf of bread as well as a package of the hamburger buns and a package of the bagels to try out.  I was given a $5 OFF digital coupon for my birthday so I used that to help take the sting out of the overall cost of these items.  Moving forward I plan to just buy one item at a time so I don’t blow my grocery budget.

 

My nonfood purchases came in at $20.97 and right now I can’t think of another thing I need so, unless I come up with something, this might be the last of my nonfood spending in 2025.  My total spent on food came in at $133.83 and I still have money left!  Considering I did a shop at Costco and splurge on the Hero bread products I was amazed.  I’ll be rolling over $75.74 to add to next month’s budget which will set me up to do some more stocking up and holiday prep shopping.  I’m pretty pleased with the end results and very glad I did the two month grocery challenge in July and August which allowed me to do this bigger shop and restock.

 

Are you doing any winter stockpiling or holiday food shopping yet?  Any great deals you just couldn’t pass up?