groceries…again?!?

Lots of times, I forget that people who don’t know us personally often wonder how we do what we do! And when it comes to certain things, sometimes I wonder how we do what we do! Take grocery shopping for instance…

back home, we had 3 large chest freezers in the garage, and 2 full-size side-by-side fridge/freezers in the house (one in the kitchen and one in the back mud room). And I liked to keep them full. Once a week (minimum) I would go to my fav. store Costco, and stock up on staples, the most important being 7 boxes of milk (14 gallons). And, while we didn’t go through 20 pounds of real butter a week, that is what I considered my ‘on hand’ amount to have; 6 dzn. eggs (I do miss REAL eggs from our own chickens!), 10 packages of cream cheese, 4-5# blocks of Tillamook (boy, that was cool to go see it made since we eat so much of it!)…

We also bought a lot of things in bulk, like popcorn in 50 pound bags from the natural food store in town, or multiple 50# bags of flour from our local Wheat MT…

Being so prepared doesn’t go so well with living in an RV.

Now, living in the 5th wheel, we buy 1 box of milk at a time, and hope that we have room for those 2 measly gallons. We don’t buy 4-5# blocks of cheese, we buy 1-2# block (and hope we have room for it). And flour – what flour??? -we don’t bake much in the rv. Popcorn = one container of Orville at a time.

Grocery shopping is one of the areas where we have had to really change how we do things! And lately, it seems like that is all I do! Because we are so limited on space, we find ourselves having to shop much more frequently.

Before, I would buy what was on my list, and also what I felt like; woe to the checkbook if momma went to Costco hungry! But, at least I always had room for however much I bought.

Now, I try to always remember to check the fridge/freezer to see how much free space I have in there before I go to the store, and then buy only what can fit. Yet my optimistic spirit 🙂 (hehehe!) is always sure that I have more room than I actually do, and I am forever buying too many cold items! The kids never seem to mind it when I overbuy though because it is always the ice cream that has to go; one time in N.M, it meant they got to eat 4 boxes of ice cream bars – at once – before they melted (I’m pretty sure it’s a sin to throw away good food)!?!?!

While I still enjoy shopping sales, and also matching coupons, I have to do it on a much smaller scale. I will admit that I do have a small amount of overflow in our storage unit, but I try to keep it minimal or else we will have too many of certain items when it comes time to pull out this fall.

Anyway – I decided that I would be like those savings/coupon blogs and show you all the groceries that I snagged today…

(cuz I just know that you all are super excited to read about our groceries!) LOL!

though the savings-blog-ladies would be so disappointed in my purchases – I didn’t use a single coupon, I didn’t shop the sales (which I do periodically – usually after reading one of their blogs!), and my errands took awhile so by the time I got to buying groceries, I was hungry (which accounts for items like the orange parfait – I Never buy those things!). As for the pizzas – we do NOT have room for cardboard pizzas in our little fridge/freezer – they sat on the counter until it was time to cook them for dinner. We have a tradition in our house (mobile or not), pizza and popcorn every Friday night, in front of a movie.

The boys unloaded all the groceries for me and, believe it or not, we made it all fit in the kitchen (I should have taken a before picture!)…

check out our pack job…
(though you are sure to notice that one box of fudgesicles didn’t make it into the freezer)…going from 50+ sq. ft. of fridge/freezer space in the house (not counting chest freezers) to 9 square feet has been a little bit of a challenge! It means that every time I run into town, I will pick up a gallon or 2 of milk if nothing else. It means that we don’t always have everything on hand to make whatever strikes us on a whim. It means that I spend way too much money at Costco because I am Always stopping there! And above all else, it means that everyone in the family has learned to open the fridge/freezer door with caution!!!

Living in an RV has taught us (among many other things), that we are incredibly blessed, and tend to believe that we NEED so much more than we can actual live with (we could actually LIVE without a fridge at all!). I am thankful that I have 9 square feet of fridge!

So, the next time that you are tempted to complain about having to clean out that big fridge in your kitchen, think of the 13 of us, and be thankful for your square footage! LOL! 🙂