It's a Sickness

On Friday I had to take a loaf of bread out of the freezer, AGAIN. Since Monday it was our fourth loaf. Good Grief, I'm thinking I'm thankful I can afford to buy bread rather than have to constantly make it like many women before me. I know homemade bread is wonderful to eat but the kneading and mixing and raising, it takes me back to my formula making days and that was just measuring, mixing, and pouring and bottles and nipples and rings and caps and running the dishwasher twice a day . . . oh yeah, and pumping to mix with formula . . . way too many steps and by the time I made one gallon, it seemed like it was gone again and time to make more, never ending which would be the way bread making would be here. When 3 kids take their lunch 2 or 3 times a week and Aaron takes a couple sandwiches and I eat one for lunch going through several loaves doesn't seem hard. Does it really matter? Other than the cost and lack of storage space, no. I wish we had one of those small chest freezers than I could buy 5 or 10 or 20 loaves and stick them in the freezer along with a million other things I'd stock up on. But we only have the little freezer above our fridge so not much fits. One or two loaves with all the other stuff, but like I said it doesn't matter because since Monday I have been to the grocery store FOUR times. Not because I forget stuff, I mean I do forget stuff but I don't go back because I forgot something. I go for the good deals. I ONLY buy stuff on sale and have doing that for about a year. Using the sales ad and coupons, I save a ton of money but to do that you have to stock up when stuff is on sale and you have to go in time for the sales. What's annoying is the main sales start on Wednesdays and I shop at 2 different stores in 2 different towns. I try to go earlier rather than later but I really don't like the actual chore of shopping I sometimes break it up going to one store at the beginning of the sale week and another at the end. On top of that, one store usually has extra sales that begin on a Thursday or Friday and go for 2 or 3 or 4 days no pattern to that. If there's good buys I try to go then. This week on top of the 4 day sale on Saturday there was a 6 hour only sale on Saturday: really good buys like ground beef for 99 cents, pints of potato salad for 99 cents, bags of shredded cheese at 99 cents, and 18 donut holes for 99 cents amongst several other things. What a mistake it was to go into that store because everybody in a 35 mile radius must have been there. People were pushing and you couldn't turn a corner without waiting 10 minutes to get through people waiting in line. I waited over 30 minutes just to check out during which a fight ensued between two customers over if someone cut while somebody left their cart in line to go grab more items. I thought they might throw punches, all for 99 cent hamburger and milk. I got good buys but was it worth the wait? In the 4 or 5 trips I make, is my savings on good buys spent in gas? Times are tough, I have 6 people to feed, we really can't afford to eat out much and 6 people can go through a ton of food like a loaf a bread a day, one bag of grapes, and a brick of cheese. And basically at this time in my life most of my shopping is for food and when I see a good deal I can't pass it up, it's a sickness.