Monday, June 25, 2012

Making & Saving a Little Money

Remember the vintage 1930's chair I had for sale?  It sold for $80 on Friday!  I now have more space in my living room.  I also had a well used lawn mower in the shed that my neighbor left when he moved.  He used to sometimes cut my grass in exchange for storing it in the shed.  I hire the widow down the street to cut my grass so I didn't need it, couldn't pull the cord with my arthritis anyway.  It sold on Saturday for $20.  Since I spent $101 at Wallyworld I guess it was an even exchange this week.

I finally made a trip to the discount/salvage grocery store on Saturday.  I was rather disappointed.  I know salvage stores are a gamble and not always the cleanest and this was true here as well.
It looks huge in this picture from their website but it is smaller than you would think.  At the end of an old strip mall in a not very good part of town, it was definitely an adventure.
I'm not saying bargains were not to be had, they were, especially if you like the items from Mexico with all Spanish labels.  But most of their canned goods were badly dented and priced higher than the perfect cans I can buy at Dollar General or Big Lots.  A lot of the items were imports and I'm sure were cheaper than you would pay in a big name store but I really don't eat that kind of thing.
I did get some apple cider in 2 liter bottles and some raspberry and black currant juice concentrate in 1 liter cartons for 99¢ each, a very good savings there.  And 6 perfect cans of black beans for 39¢ each.
I mainly went for the meat sale that they advertised of 1 pound rolls of Farmland sausage for 99¢.  It was in the upright freezer section and I bought 2.  Also some Blue Ribbon brand thick sliced bacon in 2 pound packages at $6.50 each.
Last week they advertised Jimmy Dean sausage for $1.25 each for 1 pound rolls.  I picked up 2 of those even though they were now $1.59.  I was rather dismayed as the frozen section they were in was one of those open chest types.  A few of the rolls on top were bloated like a balloon, a sure sign they have gotten too warm and gone bad.  I dug to the bottom for the hard frozen ones I got and will test them before eating.  I think if they were hard frozen they should still be ok.
I didn't need any rice or wheat based items and would not have bought them anyway when I saw a pantry moth flitting by.  I made that mistake once when buying from a dollar store, never again.
All in all they will have to have a really good sale on frozen meat for me to go back.  It was a 30 minute drive to get there, not a good part of town and not the piles of bargains I had hoped to find.  But you never know till you try.

3 comments:

Debra Dixon said...

Have you gotten some other unwanted things out of your house too?

Anonymous said...

Do you have an Aldi's nearby? I find they usually have the best overall bargains and their store brands are quite good. I shop the Dollar General grocery store sometimes. Generally, I just go to Kroger (or H.E.B., in Texas - though it seems to depend on each one whether I would shop there twice - Is there a Brookshires close by? I shopped there in Texas, too), but Aldi's really does have great produce and dairy buys, especially.

Recycled Cottage & Garden said...

No Aldi's here. We do have HEB but since they moved from my lower income area into the affluent subdivision their prices went up accordingly. Kroger is good with sale items. And Brookshire Bros is higher than the Food Fair across the road from it. I usually go to Food Fair for produce and meat and the various dollar stores or Walmart for canned goods, juices, peanut butter, bread and crackers.
I was hoping the salvage place was going to be nicer with better priced items. Oh, well.

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