Buying in bulk
The seemingless endless line of unrecyclable
empty cocoa tins in the barn pushed me over the edge into buying in
bulk. The concept of bulk food makes ecological sense (cut down
on packaging), emergency preparedness sense, and financial sense.
Still, it took me a month after considering bulk food before I actually
made the leap --- here's why:
First I had to figure out what to buy,
and how much. I've summarized how long
various foods can be expected to last in the table to the left. I
decided to start out with a "small" amount of a few items for our first
experiment, skipping the sugar and pasta which seem to cost the same in
the grocery store as in bulk, any items which last less than six
months, and items we don't use enough of to merit a bulk
purchase.
We live at least an hour and a half's drive from the nearest bulk food
store, so I initially considered
buying online. Most folks recommend Walton Feed for online bulk
food, and their prices did indeed seem to be perfect. However,
once you load up your shopping cart and proceed to checkout you'll find
out that shipping costs are as high
as food costs. Not my cup of tea!
Instead, I dropped by a Mennonite store while
visiting Daddy in South Carolina last week, buying 50 pounds each of
white, whole wheat, and bread flours, 25 pounds of rolled oats, and 13
pounds of cocoa to get us started. I suspect that won't be enough
of anything to last six months, but I
also had to consider our very limited mouse-free and dry storage
space.
After all, buying in bulk doesn't make sense if the extra food spoils
or gets coated in mouse droppings!
Although my primary reason for buying in bulk was the packaging guilt,
my wallet was pretty happy too. I saved only a tiny bit on each
bag of flour compared to grocery store prices, but knocked off nearly a
third of my oats' price per
pound and saved a whopping 55% on the cocoa. I guess I can eat
even more hot cocoa and chocolate cake in the months
ahead....
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.