My Stash

I went on a shopping spree yesterday.....for food! A local grocery store here (Fry's) had a sale on their cereal and oatmeal for $1 a box. So on Saturday I went to Walmart and bought lots of boxes of our favorite Walmart brand - Cinnamon Roll and price-matched the price with my Fry's ad. I didn't buy the cereal because on the ad it said "selected varieties" and I wasn't sure if Walmart would price match it. So on Monday morning, I went to Fry's and bought 36 boxes of cereal. I then went to Walmart to buy more oatmeal since I had cleared the shelf on Saturday. When I was checking out I asked the checker about the cereal. She said that I could buy ANY Walmart generic brand of cereal for $1 a box. Since some checkers say different things about price-matching, I left my cart of oatmeal there, got another cart, and went back and bought a cart full of cereal!!

I got some pretty strange looks from people. It makes me laugh because when I lived in Utah, fellow shoppers wouldn't even bat an eye with my cart full of cereal. They would have just asked me what was on sale!! See, us crazy Mormons try to have some food storage. Our church teaches us that whenever possible, we should have a year supply of food. That isn't neccessarily because we think there will be a major disaster and we will need food (though I'm sure many people with food storage in recent hurricanes were happy with their stash), but also to help save money. Why buy a box of cereal for $3 or $4 when I can get several month's supply at just $1 a box?? It also helps to have some food storage built up in our horrible economy. There is a very good chance that Derek will get laid off this month. He does have 7 months of full severance luckily. Best case scenario, he finds a job right away making more money than he is now and we have double income for 7 months and use that money to pay off our cars. But in this economy, we aren't banking on it. At least we have breakfast covered until sometime next year!!

I got the following in generic brands:

6 - Captain Crunch with crunch berries
4 - Grape Nuts
6 - Strawberry Awake (This is a Walmart brand like Honey Bunches of Oats, but with strawberries)
4 - Honey Nut Cheerios
12 - Raisin Bran
10 - Honey Bunches of Oats
2 - Frosted Flakes
5 - Froot Loops
9 - Rice Chex (great for making Monkey Munch...Yum!!!)
4 - Apple Jacks
4 - Lucky Charms
10 - Fruit and cream variety oatmeal
7 - Maple and brown sugar oatmeal
16 - Brown sugar and cream variety oatmeal
15 - Cinnamon Roll oatmeal

TOTAL: 66 boxes of cereal and 48 boxes of oatmeal packets. Since there is no tax on food in Arizona, the total cost for breakfast until sometime next year.....$114.

My kids were very happy to see some sugar cereals, since I TRY not to buy them too often. So they were sent to school today happy and on a sugar high. I'm sure they were struggling to stay awake around 10 am when that sugar was wearing off!! So if there is a big disaster in Arizona, you can all come to my house for dinner. Bring milk and a spoon.....we're having cereal.