Ok, this has seriously been SUCH a huge help to me since having kids that I cannot say enough about it. One basic way to simplify AND save money is to price out home delivery options for things that you would normally run around town for at the store. For me, I LOVE LOVE LOVE amazon and their subscribe & save program.
I have over 20 things that I don’t have to buy at the store anymore and that I get in bulk shipments and SAVE money on by having them show up at my door. There’s no way that’s not a win-win in my book! Taking 2 (soon to be 3 kids) to the store leaves me less than productive to say the least, plus I don’t have the option to price compare or the room and hands to fill the cart with enough to stock up things.
This week, I’m not able to get off my feet much (while stalling the arrival of our next precious little one ) and I still have been able to stock up on pantry and household items, thanks to this —>
If you have an amazon prime account you can do their subscribe and save program and if you order more than 5 items at a time, you get 20% off your entire order (when a lot of the items are already cheaper to start with)! If you don’t already have a prime account, you can sign up with Amazon Mom and get a free 3 month trial here.
So here’s how it works…
with Subscribe & Save you pick your item, pick how often you want it auto-shipped (once every month – once every 6 months) and what day of the month you want your shipment. For example, I have an auto-ship for the 3rd of the month so on that date everything I have set for that month will ship. It take some getting used to, but you can easily change the dates and months around once it’s set up.
Here are a few tips and trick that I’ve learned to make sure we’re getting deals (as well as saving time running to stores, gas driving around town, headaches getting my kids to cooperate on extra shopping trips, etc…..)
- Next time you go shopping, save your receipt and come home and price compare to the amazon price. Make sure to factor in your EXTRA 20% off if you find 5 items. I was shocked at how many things are cheaper online, no tax and no shipping fees! yes, please!
- Set items to ship only once every 6 months at first so you can learn how long it takes you to use what you’re buying. When you are about to need more, just go and change your shipping month to the next month and it will be on it’s way with the next shipment. After that it’s easy to gauge how often you use up each item.
- Once you have 5 items shipping in one month, try and spread it out to order 5 different items for the next month to get the 20% discount. This also makes it easier if you think of something you want to add later and still want the bigger discount.
For those wondering what kind of items you would order like this, here is a list of what I get to give you some ideas:
- diapers x 2
- wipes
- paper towels
- toilet paper
- flavored syrup for coffee
- organic coconut milk
- organic ketchup
- deli brown mustard
- organic coconut oil
- allergen free cereal bars
- allergen free cookies
- squeeze applesauce
- organic vegetable glycerin
- moisturizing lotion
- herbal tea bags
- sunflower nut butter
- brown rice flour
- gluten free baking mix
- organic vanilla extract
- rolled oats
I swear I don’t work for amazon, but I would if I could b/c I love it SO much! I did sign up to have an affiliate store on my blog for the aforementioned reason, so if you want to see specific brands of what I use, you can browse through there to see a lot of these items. I am just all about saving time and saving money right now to SIMPLIFY our lives and this has been a great way to do it!!