Monday 16 September 2013

Top Ten Tips To Budgeting # 3 - Your Pantry

Pantry:

Always keep a good knowledge as to what is in your pantry at all times, as this will save you money in the long run.

How many of us have got to the supermarket and think, ''have I got weet bix at home'' as your not 100% sure you buy it, then when you get home you find you already had a packet, and that money could of been spent on something else.

The way I organised my pantry was every thing had a place, and if there were two of that item it got stacked behind the first item, mistakes did occur but a missing favourite item, soon teaches you where that product belonged.

I used a whiteboard which was screwed into the door of the pantry with a marker on a piece of string, all the essential products were listed, such as



  • cereal's opened ( you would name the cereals)
  • cereals closed (you would name the cereals)
  • jams
  • baking ingredients
  • herbs
  • spices
  • pasta
  • tin fruit
  • spaghetti
  • baked beans 
  • lunch stuff    
and their quantities were listed beside them, because I was a mum that worked full time, this system had too work so the whole family had to operate it.

How the system worked was, if you took a can of spaghetti out of the pantry, you changed the quantity on the white board from 6 to 5 and so on, so as I went to do a shopping list, which was normally in a hurry as we were running out the door, at a quick glance I could see what was needed e.g. spaghetti, and in my head I would know that I would need 3 tins during the next week, I had 5 so I was not going to need to buy any.
I hear you chuckling and saying that would never work?

Well all it takes is for one child to say ''Mum we don't have any cocoa pops'', my remark would be what does the number on the whiteboard say, bla bla bla so if they want their favourite cereals stocked in the pantry they have to play the game, its simple, or they miss out, and they had to settle for what was there.

This also saved me having to constantly buy stuff we didn't need and when we needed to be strict with our cash the quickest way to do that was not to buy stuff we didn't need.

As you unpack the shopping of course its Mum's job to make sure numbers do balance the white board telly but 9 times out of 10 they did.

This I might add, did take a good month I would say to train everyone, but perseverance pays off and the system was a good one.






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