Stockpiling…what is it and what does it mean?  And how can stockpiling save you hundreds…maybe even thousands off of your grocery budget?  We are about to find out.  Welcome to our 7th post in our Extreme Couponing series.  If you’re new to this series and want to catch up with the rest of us, here are the previous posts:  #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, and #6.

First of all, I want to point out the difference between stockpiling and hoarding. We’ve all seen the shows about “Hoarders” on Oprah or 20/20.  I guess there’s even a TV show about it now…it’s a disturbing and fascinating subject.  Compulsive hoarding is a specific type of behavior characterized by:

*Acquiring and failing to throw out a large number of items that would appear to have little or no value to others (e.g., papers, notes, fliers, newspapers, clothes)

*Severe cluttering of the person’s home so that it is no longer able to function as a viable living space

*Significant distress or impairment of work or social life

Photo by elgin.jessica

This is not in fact what stockpiling is. Stockpiling is a food storage or stash of food and non-food items.  The idea is that you buy products before you need them and build up a stockpile of food and toiletries.  When you run out of an item shop from your stockpile. A stockpile helps us prepare for our families in case of emergency such as natural disaster or sudden unemployment or illness & helps us be self sufficient among even the hardest of situations.

Photo by The Krazy Coupon Lady

The biggest difference? Stockpiling is intentional and helpful, and hording is not.

So, how do you save money by stockpiling items?  It seems a little counter-intuitive, doesn’t it?  The way that you can save a TON of money, is buying lots of a product when it is free or really cheap.  Buy way more than you need…ideally you will be able to purchase however much your family will need of that item until you know the next sale of that product will come around.  When you are able to buy a tube of toothpaste for example, for pennies instead of dollars, you need to buy a lot of toothpaste so that you won’t have to run out of toothpaste and then need to buy toothpaste again at full price.  The more items like this that you have stockpiled, the less items that you are having to pay full price for on a regular weekly or monthly budget- thus, your grocery budget starts getting smaller and smaller.

Principals of stockpiling:

*Figure out what your “buy price” is for a certain item. A good goal would be to stockpile that item at 75% off of regular retail value or higher.

*Figure out how much of that item your family would use in 3 months, 6 months, or a year…however long it will be until the item goes on sale again. You must start watching the sales cycles.  One of my favorite coupon websites is The Krazy Coupon Lady.  A few weeks ago, she had a really helpful article about sales cycles.  She took the guess work right out of it.  I you go HERE you can check out the article!

*Where and how are you going to store your stockpile? Think outside the box of your kitchen. Do you have an extra guest room that could double as a stockpile storage? A basement? A garage? An attic? I have an easy access walk-in attic that I use for storing my stockpile of mostly toiletries, laundry soap, etc. You just need to be careful about excessive heat and moisture and making sure you are storing things in the proper place to not encourage things to go bad.

When you look at that stockpile photo above, how does it make you feel?  What if that was your house?  Wouldn’t there be a security in having all of that available to you in case of an emergency or to have the opportunity to bless someone else who found themselves in a difficult place in life.  Some of the most inspiring ideas behind extreme couponing are in the idea of a growing and thriving stockpile like this.  What a way to bless your family!

Related posts: