Buy in Bulk, or, How I Continue to Receive an Education Every Time I Go to Whole Foods

When I hear the encouragement to "buy in bulk" when I hear tips about saving money, I usually cringe a little. See, I've made buying in bulk mistakes before, like the time we bought about 120 rolls of toilet paper because it was the cheapest per roll price. There are now toilet paper rolls stuffed in the few conceivable storage places we could find in our tiny apartment (and some in some inconceivable locations as well.) Yes, we save .01 per hundred sheets, or something like that. Was it worth it? Probably not, although we have not had to buy toilet paper in a year. A full year.

However, buying in bulk sometimes makes sense. If you use a product or item frequently, and it goes on sale infrequently, then you should buy enough when it is on sale to last you until it is on sale again, as long as you have space and it won't expire.

That said, if you like Stonyfield yogurt, it is currently on sale for .50 a pop at Whole Foods. So now half of the top shelf of our refrigerator is yogurt. Seriously, we spent close to 25 dollars on yogurt alone yesterday. Why? Because, even with our yogurt-obsessed kick of one for breakfast and maybe one for lunch, we have enough to last us the next three months. It was over half off, and even sale prices on mass-producers dannon, yoplait, and the like are comparable to that price.

So think about what you like to eat. That thing you will always have, no matter what, with a great deal of frequency. Then go out and buy it when it's on sale. Easy enough.

However, no trip to Whole Foods is complete anymore without me learning something new. This time, I learned two important facts.

1. Whole Foods, as well as many other retailers, now offer recycling for #5 plastic, which is the heavier duty plastic found in, for example, my beloved yogurt cups. They'll also recycle your Brita Water Filters. An awesome tool to find out who near you recycles #5 can be found at the Gimme 5 website. There, you can find drop off points for #5 plastics, as well as learn how you can even MAIL IN your #5's if there is no place near you!

2. The cashier looked at us bug-eyed when we checked out with so many yogurts. He kept joking with us about how we were "setting records" on yogurt purches. Then, a manager saw our purchase and came over to tell us that Whole Foods will give you a 10% discount when you buy a case of something, or in bulk, such as say the yogurt, when it is not on sale. So, even if we ran out and yogurt had not gone back on sale, we could just ask and get a 10% discount. This holds true with all of their products!