Massive Grocery Shopping!

For the last little while, I've been slowly driven crazy by my dwindling supply of pantry essentials. It seemed like every time I went to make spaghetti, I had to go buy a new jar of spaghetti sauce; because I'd only buy one at a time.... The same idea goes for canned goods, pasta, cake mixes, cream-of soups etc. Every time I went grocery shopping I'd have to buy everything the recipe called for because I had nothing already stocked up.

When we were first married we got a few "food storage" things and had them stacked up in our closet. We'd slowly use them, and occasionally as we lived in our two apartments since Carrie's been born we'd do a little light stocking up (In one apartment, our food storage got stacked in the the extra shower). When we moved into our house (almost two years ago), we finally had a big pantry and all the food we owned fit in it. So once we worked our way through the pantry, there was no other "stockpiled" supply hidden somewhere else in the house.

Last night I finally did something about it. I went up and down every aisle in Walmart grabbing 6-8 of everything. Tuna, peanut butter, ranch, soup, crackers, pasta, rice, bbq sauce, oatmeal, mac 'n' cheese, toilet paper, shampoo.... You name it... I loaded up one cart until I couldn't possibly fit anything else in it and was only about half way done with my list. So I pushed it up to customer service and asked if they could watch it for me. I proceeded to do the same with a second full cart. The customer service girl actually let out a little laugh when I shoved my second heaping cart up...

They opened up a checkout lane just for me and $417 later.... (Mega ouch on the price category!! I wasn't expecting it to be quite that bad! Good thing it's tax refund season!) By the time it got bagged and re-stacked in the carts, it took three carts to haul it all out. Luckily they got someone to help me take it all out and load it into my van. The nice thing is now, for the next several months, the only thing I'll have to shop for are perishables and maybe the rare obscure pantry item I happened to not pick up on my massive trip.

I spent 2 1/2 hours at the store and with tons of help from Justin spent one hour unloading and reorganizing our pantry. (Even though I didn't get home from the store until 11pm) I'm so incredibly pleased with the final result that I took a picture. Of my pantry...