Bulk buying at BJs

I've always heard it's a good idea and I've even tried it once or twice with mediocre success, but lately I've been thinking how great it would be to do one big shop per month.

'Cause frankly, I'm exhausted!

Our schedule hasn't eased up much despite trying to combine errands and designate days. Our weeks normally involve some activity out of the house every day except Thursdays and sometimes Saturdays, which I guess is better than something every day. Most days I also wind up stopping in at the market for just a few things, by which phrase I usually am doomed to spend much more than I intend for less food than I actually need.

So we joined BJ's Tuesday. We don't have one in our town, but there's one 20 miles away in the town where Curly Sue takes dance. I figured if I was going to be there once a week for at least two hours anyway, I could do some shopping while she's in class. Milk's cheap and so is gas with a membership card.

We made a special trip there tonight, trying to beat the Labor Day crowds and lay in our first monthly supplies. We came in about $30 under our budget for the trip, and we still have a small weekly amount budgeted for fresh produce, eggs and anything else we need so I can stop back by on my weekly trip if I need to. I also intend to top off my gas tank while I'm there.

In addition to bulk amounts of staple items, we also picked up Rice Krispies Treats, cheese puff balls, animal crackers, peanut butter crackers, frozen pizzas and chewing gum. It's going to be tricky, seeing vats of treats sitting around and disciplining ourselves to ration them so they last an entire month. (I know my personal limits, so we left the 30-pack of candy bars on the shelf.)

Still, I'm confident this will be a successful experiment so I'm keeping myself accountable to myself by posting here. Hopefully in a month I'll be able to report how few trips I actually made to a regular market and how we stayed within a reasonable grocery budget as a result.