Accomplishing a lot...

while doing very little. I’m not sure that’s exactly what I mean, but I hate the phrase ‘Killing two birds with one stone.” It seems so … Neanderthal.

Anyway.

I had an interesting thought yesterday while I was at the grocery store. It occurred to me with just this one task – grocery shopping – I was actually accomplishing several frugal things at one time. Here’s what I came up with:

~ In finishing up our unpacking over the weekend, we had three small boxes that were tagged for the Goodwill. This particular grocery store has a Goodwill drop-off truck in the parking lot, so before I went into the store, I was able to donate these three boxes.

~ I used coupons I had at home for several items on my grocery list.

~ One of the items I bought had a coupon attached to it so I was able to utilize that coupon, too.

~ The simple act of grocery shopping in and of itself saves us money. True, you have to spend money to purchase the groceries, but once purchased, we have all of the ingredients we will need for a week’s worth (more, really) of meals and snacks. That means that by using the ingredients we purchased at the grocery store, we can prepare our meals at home and save the expense of having to go out. Kevin and I are both very good about brown-bagging our lunches and snacks. In fact, we much prefer taking out own over going out to eat every day.

~ This particular grocery store – Ralph’s – has a rewards program that actually pays you to shop; you earn rewards points just by purchasing your groceries. Four times per year we’re mailed Rewards coupons that can be used just like cash for grocery purchases. Sweet!

~ We bring our own canvas bags to bag our groceries; we receive rewards points for doing so.

~ On the back of the grocery receipt there are coupons for the Fantastic Sam’s both Kevin and I use. The coupons reduce the cost of an adult haircut from $15.95 to just $12.95.

Wow! That's a lot of frugal mileage from just one simple task. If only everything was this easy!