How I Got My Groceries For $23

I got a lot of comments on my last post asking exactly how I got all those groceries for only $23. I am going to try and explain, but please keep in mind that I feel like crap right now, and I am drugged up on nyquil, so if I don't make sense, come back in a day or two and I will try again. :)

A couple of weeks ago, Missy, of Herd It Here First, who happens to be one of my bestest friends who I met, believe it or not, through this blog, and we only live about 25 minutes away from each other so we started hanging out, and she is totally awesome and I love her and her whole family and I now totally get how people meet their soul mates online...not that Missy is my soul mate, but you know what I mean, right?

Wow, that got a little off subject huh? lol! Told you I was loopy....

Anyway, Missy told me about this grocery store that has "parking lot sales" every other Saturday. Basically, the store takes all it's dented and smashed and almost out of date (or totally out of date as I found out with 40 bottles of salad dressing...I'll tell you about that in a sec) stuff and lines it up in boxes in the parking lot. They have everything from cereal and granola bars to candles and candy. At 9am, they blow a whistle, and everyone grabs whatever they can, and puts it in their box. When you leave, you pay $7 for each box you filled. Between us, we filled 6 boxes, three for me and three for Missy. They also had cases of chips for $2 each, and each case had 20 bags of chips.

When we got back to my house, we raided each others boxes and traded some stuff, and I gotta say, we did awesome! This was our first time, and we learned a few thing that we are going to try next time.

First, I am not good at this. I have issues with crowds of people, and I was only able to fill half my box, and then I had to give it to Ryan, who had already filled his. We had the girls in a corner guarding the boxes we already filled, and next time this will be my job. Right before the whistle sounded, I looked at the people all around me (Missy, Ryan, Alex, and Junior were no where near me at this time) and said, "I'm scared!". They laughed, and I told them I wasn't kidding...I said I would probably end up in the middle of the crowd with the box over my head crying hysterically. Luckily, I didn't have a total meltdown, but we learned that I am not the best person for the "getting", so i will do the "guarding".

Second, you are allowed to grab full boxes. I thought you had to fill the box they gave you, but oh no. People were grabbing full boxes from the center and throwing them to their "guards", and then when everything was gone, they would go through their boxes, and put the stuff they don't want back. So this time, everyone on my "team" is going to grab full boxes when the whistle blows, and then we will go through them. If others can do it, so can we.

Third, we need more people, or at least Junior thinks we do. I think we did great with just the six of us, but we'll see.

There was one point during the sale when there were soooo many people in front of me, I had nowhere to go. The guy behind me pushed me with his box to get me to move. I turned and looked at him, and he said, "oh, sorry", real sarcastically. I asked him where he expected me to go, and he just pushed me, and the other people out of the way. I couldn't believe how rude people were. That's just another reason I need to be the "guard". I can't be that aggressive.

When we first got there, it was supposed to be Ryan and I together. He was going to hold the box, and I would just throw stuff in it. But when he saw that Alex had his own box, he wanted his own, so I let him go by himself. Junior was on the other side of the parking lot, so we never really got to talk about who should get what. We all saw salad dressing, and we all grabbed a "few" bottles. When we were done, and sorting through to condense boxes, I saw that we all had dressing, so I put a bunch back, but apparently not enough. When we got home and unpacked the boxes, I had 42 bottles of salad dressing, about 20 different varieties of ranch dressing, and the rest variations of italian dressings. Most of them were already out of date. I am okay using the oil based dressings, because oil really doesn't go bad. But the ranch ones make me nervous, so I threw most of them out. I kept the ones that expire this month, because Brandi takes salads everyday for lunch, so I know we will use it. I also got five boxes of croutons! lol!

So that's the story. We are planning to go in two weeks, and we are going to be more prepared.

I'm thinking about bringing a fly swatter to use while standing guard....