Friday 12 June 2009

Smart Shopping

In recession days like now, not only fashion-shopping budget needs alteration, grocery shopping too. You'll be amazed at how much you can save up. Some are tips I found on the net and some are based on my own experience.

  1. If it's cheaper, buy non-perishable-every day-use items in bulk.

    This includes soaps, toothpaste, sugar, shampoo, oil etc. Even baby diapers. Some bathing items or toothpastes sometimes come in packet of several bottles/ tubes with of course, whooping discounts.

  2. For meat, veggies, or chicken, (if you feel like it though) buy them in frozen form. I know a hypermarket than sells frozen chicken for 4.5 SGD…. For FOUR pieces of chicken! Yes the chicken is a bit small, but I think it's worth it especially if you only have a small family (and it's Halal too). Some hypermarket sells 1 kg bag of frozen mixed vegetable, I even found one hypermarket that sells frozen RAW SPINACH (though it's quite difficult to find them).
  3. Why buy things in bulk and frozen state? To cut your (yes, I know you!) almost-daily trip to the supermarket. You see, each time we go to a supermarket we'll ended up with at least one item that fits into the category of so-called "useless buying." Like a pudding mix, or cake concoction that rots in the deep corner of kitchen shelf. So…. Fewer trips to supermarket, less useless buying … more savings. Capish?
  4. Rearrange your kitchen shelf and food storage shelf to be observable. Once your food storage is visible and organized, you'll know which items you need to buy and how much. So you won't buy the wrong item, buy too much, or too little.
  5. Need some household items but short of budget or just need some semi important stuff? Buy it in a two dollars store instead of a hyper mart and you will cut some cost. In Singapore, you can find this kinda store in 3 or 4 malls throughout the island. Yes, I know some of you will laugh at me when you read this.

    "Shopping in a two dollars store? C'mon! It's all cheap stuff!" Yes, it's true, it's cheap, but cheap doesn't mean it's not functional. Buy things here that are functional and unnoticeable. Most of the stuffs in the store are of good quality, but STILL you have to keep your eyes on. For example, you can buy some freezer bags in here but check for one with good material with more than 12 bags. Some boxes only contain 10 or even 7 freezer bags, but if you're lucky you can find a box with 20 freezer bags.

    Other stuff I recommend to buy here are storage or organizing boxes (see tips number 4), brooms and sweepers (but check the materials), and other organizing materials (cable and cords de-tangler, racks, small garbage cans, etc). But I don't recommend buying, for example, items of personal hygiene, like soap, toothpaste or face scrubber. For this kind of items, price talks honey.

1 comment:

Fitri said...

bring along your shopping bag or shopping trolley along with you, cause not only you can safe your money (some supermarket give discount on this), but you also can save the world :P