{"id":1800,"date":"2017-12-26T00:57:54","date_gmt":"2017-12-26T00:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/?p=1800"},"modified":"2017-12-26T00:57:54","modified_gmt":"2017-12-26T00:57:54","slug":"grocery-budget-tips-tip-19-keep-inventory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/?p=1800","title":{"rendered":"Grocery Budget Tips: Tip 19 – Keep an Inventory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome back to the grocery budget series I am\u00a0almost done writing.\u00a0 In this series, I will share the top 20 ways that I can think of that our large family uses to keep the grocery budget from getting out of line.\u00a0 To learn more, visit our\u00a0introduction<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Previously in our tip series I had mentioned that we like to stock up<\/a> on nonperishable food.\u00a0 It stores well for a long time and is affordable enough that I can buy a little extra some months and put them away for the next dip in life.\u00a0 Some months we may need to put a little more money toward an unexpected expense and the first place I look to cut corners is my grocery budget.\u00a0 I like to think we eat well, and when we have the money to eat with variety, we do.\u00a0 We also stock up on nonperishable items that I may not always have the ingredients on hand to make (if we are in a tough spot and our chickens aren\u2019t laying enough eggs and I don\u2019t have enough oil on hand to make mayo, it sure is nice to have already spent a few bucks on a jar of mayo and have it available if we want it) or items that I haven\u2019t yet perfected the recipe for.\u00a0 For our family, this includes mayonnaise (I do make mayo, but there may be times that I don\u2019t have eggs or oil on hand reliably \u2013 for those reasons, you will find mayo on my shelf), ketchup (I didn\u2019t can enough the last time I made it, so until we have another huge crop of tomatoes \u2013 we buy it), soy sauce (haven\u2019t perfected this recipe yet, we prefer storebought), dressing (I do make salad dressings sometimes, but I may not reliably have on hand the ingredients I need to make it from scratch), etc.\u00a0 By stocking up on nonperishable food, I am left just having to worry about buying meat, milk and cheese for the most part \u2013 and even those things can be slimmed down as needed if we are in an emergency situation and need to reduce our grocery bill drastically.<\/p>\n

When I am shopping and continually adding things to food storage, it\u2019s helpful to know what I already have on hand and what I am running low on, so I can buy accordingly.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to buy 10 soy sauces when I am low on lemon juice and hot sauce.\u00a0\u00a0 I realized recently I am low on rice.\u00a0 Rice!\u00a0 I had close to 500lbs at one point (we lived near a Mormom cannery and could obtain nonperishable items very affordably).\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t purchased rice in so long because I felt we were covered for quite a while.\u00a0 Well, we were.\u00a0 But I kept using and not replacing, and never updated my records.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t even been tracking prices on rice because it has been so long since I purchased it.\u00a0 Now we will begin replacing it, but prices on rice have gone up over recent years.\u00a0 If I had been paying better attention, I could have continued purchasing rice as we used it when prices were low, so that I could use our rice now in hopes that the cost would go back down by the time we were ready to stock up again.<\/p>\n

There are many helpful forms online that you can use to track the inventory of your food stock.\u00a0 I prefer making a list, organized by category, with like items listed\u00a0 on a sheet of paper.\u00a0 After the ingredient has been written down, I draw boxes (or make this list on graph paper or I\u2019ve even made these forms on the computer) for each item you have on hand.\u00a0 If you have different sizes, they each get their own line.\u00a0 Then each time you bring one out of storage, mark it off your list.\u00a0 If you are using a generic form that has a line of boxes already drawn out for you, I like to highlight how many I have on hand, then cross off a box when I bring that item out of storage.\u00a0 This way I can easily add to my list by highlighting the next boxes when I buy more.\u00a0 When a line has been filled and marked off, begin a new line at the bottom of the list, keeping all of your items in like categories.\u00a0 This will be a work in progress that you make consult as much as daily, as keep it in a place that is easy to access.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome back to the grocery budget series I am almost done writing. In this series, I will share the top 20 ways that I can think of that our large family uses to keep the grocery budget from getting out of line. To learn more, visit our introduction.<\/p>\n

Previously in our tip series I had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1801,"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800\/revisions\/1801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}