Tuesday Timesavers: Warehouse Shopping

Welcome to this week's edition of Tuesday Timesavers - helping busy mom bloggers everywhere save time each week!

This week, I'll be talking about Warehouse Shopping. I am a big, big fan of warehouse stores such as Costco (where I have a membership), BJ's, and Sam's Club. I love them not just for their money-saving potential, but for their time-saving potential as well!

If you're going to shop the warehouse stores, though, you have to do it right - otherwise you'll be shelling out a lot of money on big packages of things that will eventually go to waste. If you think of shopping at the warehouse store not as an alternative to grocery shopping, but as an aid to grocery shopping, you'll be in good shape.

For example, at the warehouse store, I pick up big boxes of the staples we use all the time, and easily-preservable perishable items.

For example, the items I might buy at Costco (monthly) over Albertsons or Publix include:

• Shampoo and Conditioner


• Granola Bars (or 100 calorie packs, or any other type of snack)


• Soap


• Pasta and Pasta Sauce


• Frozen Lunches (our Costco carries both Healthy Choice and Lean Cuisine)


• Diapers (Costco's brand diapers are amazing, and at under 18 cents a piece, are so worth it)


• Wipes (Again, Costco's brand is great and saves money over buying brand-names)


• Formula (TWO cans of Costco-brand formula for under $20...that's less than $10 a can!)


• Ground beef/turkey/chicken (refrigerate a few portions, freeze the rest)


• Milk (they still sell Milk by the gallon, but it's cheaper than the grocery store)


• Toothpaste


• Animal Crackers (one of Angelica's favorite snacks - Costco sells organic animal crackers under their store brand)


• Cereal (two boxes of Cheerios for a grand total of $4.99 versus $3.50 a box at the grocery store)


• Frozen fruit/vegetables

Doing a 45 minute Costco run monthly saves me time in that instead of making weekly trips to the grocery store, spending an hour or so each time, I usually only need to go two or three times a month to replenish the staples.

At the grocery store, I usually buy:

• Fresh Fruit/Vegetables for salads


• Bread (Though larger families may benefit from buying bread at Costco - the three of us just don't eat it fast enough and it gets moldy).


• Milk (if we run out of the gallon from Costco)


• Yogurt


• Soda (our store brand's soda - diet, of course - is good and very inexpensive)


• Juice


• Eggs

Of course, this isn't the entire shopping list - but it covers the staples and I fill in the gaps where needed.

I hope this is helpful information!

Got a suggestion for Tuesday Timesavers? Comment on this post, or email andrea@minuteformom.com.

Five Last Minute Mother's Day Ideas

So, you're sitting there, thinking to yourself..."Mother's Day is tomorrow, and the stores close in 4 hours!" (Give or take, depending on your time zone.) You haven't bought a gift yet, and you're in need of some ideas...now! As a mom, I've come up with five simple, quick, and inexpensive ideas that you can easily accomplish tonight and have ready to give to mom in the morning. (These last minute Mother's Day ideas will be geared toward husbands, but could really be used by anyone!)

1. Letters to mom
Depending on the child's age, either have the child write down what they love most about mom. If it's a baby, an adult can write the letter to mom for the baby. Put it in an envelope and give it to mom first thing in the morning. This would be a keepsake that, as a mom, I would treasure forever. (Especially since this is my first Mother's Day!)

2. Flowers
This seems like a given, but let me explain my reason for including this on the list. In my opinion, there is absolutely no reason why someone needs to order flowers and have them delivered -- so if this is what's stopping you from getting flowers -- either it's too expensive or the florist won't deliver by tomorrow -- don't let it.  Stop at your neighborhood grocery store and pick up a bouquet. (In my experience, flowers from the grocery store last longer anyway!)

3. Photo frame
Who doesn't have eight million pictures of their kids laying around? Even if you already have photo frames all over the place, pick up a special one just for mom. Find that picture laying around of mom and baby (or mom and teenager, as the case may be) and put it in the frame. 

4. Online gift cards
So, maybe you got off of work late and couldn't get to the mall in time to pick up a gift card for your favorite mom. It happens. Fortunately, a lot of online retailers sell e-gift certificates in many denominations. For example, Sephora.com sells e-gift certificates as low as $10. Makeup not her thing? Try Amazon.com, which sells e-gift certificates as low as $5. These can be sent right to Mom's email box to use whenever she wants! Amazon's even have special Mother's Day graphics that can be included. 

5. Hit the gift card rack
Here's another good alternative if you didn't get a chance to hit the mall. Many grocery stores are open 24 hours, and many of them have racks of gift cards for other businesses. When you stop to pick up flowers (refer to #2), why not grab a gift card to your favorite mom's favorite store? 

BONUS IDEA:
This one is the most important, and best of all -- it's FREE! While much hype is given to gift giving, ultimately, Mother's Day is all about celebrating being MOM, and the best gift of all is your thanks. Tell the top mom in your life that you love her, and thanks for doing all that she does.

Tuesday Timesavers: Mint.com

Welcome to this week's Tuesday Timesavers, a weekly feature where we talk about things that help busy moms like you save time every day!

This week's featured timesaver is Mint.com. I've been seeing tweets about this service show up on my Twitter feed over the past week and decided to check it out.

Mint.com is an online financial management service much like Microsoft Money or Quicken, except that it is free and done completely online. The process of creating an account is quick, easy, and completely painless. Simply enter your email address and password, and then follow the prompts to add your bank account, loan account, savings account, credit card accounts, and any other financial accounts that you have to Mint.com. It automatically downloads the account details to your Mint.com account.

After doing this, it automatically categorizes your spending (with relatively high accuracy - I had to go back and change a few things, like my daughter's daycare I had to change from "Education" to "Kids - Babysitter & Daycare") and helps plan a budget for you. With just a few clicks, you have have a complete analysis of your financial standing and net worth. You can even add the value of your cars and your house to complete the picture.

And if that's not enough, once you've added a credit or loan account to Mint.com, they send you email reminders letting you know when your next payment is due. These reminders are also posted in an "alerts" section when you're signed into Mint.com.

Finally, the site is secure. Security is verified by Verisign, Trust-e and McAfee, so you know your information is safe.

The only complications I ran into are with credit cards that have extra layers of security. For example, one of my credit card accounts requires that you enter your password and answer three security questions every time you sign in. That one I wasn't able to add to my Mint.com account, but it's set up to auto-pay anyway so it's not really a concern.

There's about a million more cool features on Mint.com, but why not check it out for yourself?

In the interest of transparency - the opinion expressed here is mine and mine alone - I was not compensated by Mint.com in any way for writing this review.