February Grocery Challenge Wrap Up - Made It!

Happy to say I stayed under budget this month. I rewarded myself by buying myself some chocolate bars. This however may not have been a great idea. The "side effect" of sticking to a budget this month has been that I've not purchased a lot of junk food and, therefore, we've all eaten better and I'm slowly losing weight. Here's the last couple days...

Sunday Feb. 26th
No spending.
Made venison chili for dinner.

Monday Feb. 27th
No spending.
Left overs for dinner.

Tuesday Feb 28th
Ran through Aldi and picked up a dozen eggs for $0.88 and a 3lb bag of mandarin oranges for $1.99. I'll get 0.50 back for the eggs from Checkout 51.

Next stop was Kroger. There were some new digital coupons that showed up over the weekend for $1 off 2 16-oz Kroger peanut butter jars, available to use 5 times in a single transaction. Just so happens that their peanut butter is on sale for $1 until tomorrow. Woohoo!!
Also picked up a few freebies and Mega Sale items, then treated myself to the chocolate bars I've been eyeballing all month (seriously). They had had the new Hershey's cookie layer bars as a Free Friday download earlier in the month and I really liked it. They are $1 each and I had $1 off 2 coupons. I also wanted to try the new Milka Oreo cookie chocolate bars. They are 0.79 and I had a 0.55 insert coupon that came out over the weekend, plus Checkout 51 is giving back 0.55, so essentially more than free after the Checkout 51 money back. Ended up with...

10 16-oz jars of Kroger peanut butter @ 1.00 each sale price (regularly 1.29)
1 Milka Oreo candy bar @ 0.79
1 jar Ragu pasta sauce @ 1.79 (Mega Sale item)
1 box Cascadian Farms granola cereal @ 2.99 (Mega Sale item)
2 16-oz boxes Ronzoni veggie pasta spaghetti @ 0.99 each (Mega Sale item)
1 can Kroger refrigerated crescent rolls @ 1.39 (Mega Sale item)
1 16-oz box Creamette macaroni @ 0.99 (Mega Sale item)
4.49 lbs of boneless skinless chicken breasts @ 7.95
1 Chobani Flip yogurt @ 1.25
8 Hershey's Cookie Layer Crunch bars @ 1.00 each
subtotal 37.13
- 3.00 (Mega Sale Buy 6 items instant discount)
- 5 (1.00 off 2 Kroger PB digital coupon)
- 0.55 (Milka Oreo insert coupon)
- 1.29 (free Ragu Kroger coupon)
- 2.49 (free Cascadian Farms cereal Kroger coupon)
- 0.50 (off 2 Ronzoni pasta Kroger digital coupon)
- 0.50 (Kroger refrigerated crescent rolls digital coupon)
- 1.25 (Chobani yogurt Free Friday download coupon)
- 4 (1.00 off 2 Hershey's Cookie Layer Crunch insert coupons)
18.55
+0.62 tax on all the candy bars
19.17

Total for everything today $22.04

I'm donating 2 jars of peanut butter, the Ragu and the Ronzoni noodles.

This is what I ended up for my February donations...

$19.59 for everything in the photo

3 bottles Suave shampoo
3 bottles Suave conditioner
6 bottles Herbal Essences shampoo
6 bottles Herbal Essences conditioner
4 bottles Vaseline lotion
3 boxes 10-ct Kroger instant oatmneal
4 Speed Stick deodorants
3 Axe deodorants
2 16-oz jars Kroger peanut butter
1 jar Ragu
2 16-oz boxes Ronzoni veggie spaghetti noodles
3 boxes 80-ct Up and Up bandaids

Total regular shelf price was $103.58 so I saved over 81% combining sales, store promotions and coupons.

I ended up having to move the Ocean Spray grapefruit juice to my grocery spending cause my husband saw it sitting in my donation pile and said he wanted it to drink for himself.

I also had to move one of the Axe deodorants to my grocery budget too cause my daughter grabbed one. I had had the HBA donation stash stored on a shelf in her bathroom... until I realized she was going to help herself. She already had two other deodorants partially used in her room so when I asked why she took the Axe, she said she wanted to see what it was like. Arghhh! After that, the donation stash got moved to the basement.

This is one of the problems I run into with couponing and stockpiling. I've found that if I get a bunch of similar things... shampoo, cereal, etc... in different scents or flavors, the kids want to open or try one of everything "to see what it's like." Needless to say, it makes me crazy to find 4 different opened boxes of cereal or shampoo... and so I hide stuff. Does anyone else have this problem?

All in all, I'm happy with how the month went. I've stocked up on laundry detergent, paper towels, coffee, shampoo, conditioner, and peanut butter. I stayed under budget and I think we ate better too since I was able to meal plan more. That being said, I've decided to continue my challenge through the first 21 days of March. Taking the last week of March off because we will be on Spring Break. Budget for the first 21 days of March will be $150. I want to show that this is a sustainable budget and not just a one time thing.

February Grocery Spending: $199.24
February Donation Spending: $19.59