Have you been considering making a change in the way you shop for products? You really want to support businesses other than chains and corporations, while shopping small but also staying on budget?

In this post I’m going to share how we went from shopping almost solely at Walmart and Aldi to rarely stepping inside a grocery store at all.

If you want to stop shopping at the grocery store, support small business, and even save money in the process, this post is for you!

How We Stopped Shopping At Big Boxed Stores

This post may contain affiliate links which means I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link! You can find my full Disclaimer here.

As we get deeper into this homesteading life, we have become more aware of where our food comes from. This was one of the main reasons I started gardening back in 2013.

It started with gardening in the backyard, and buying beef and pork from from a family friend. It has quickly become our mission to provide food for our family we know where it came from, supports small business, and stay out of the grocery stores as much as possible.

Here’s how we’ve been able to stay out of the grocery store and still provide food for our family.

Gardening

This one comes with no surprise. I talk about gardening here on this blog and on my Instagram. Last year we had raised beds in our backyard, as well as an in ground bed at our family farm. This year we’re expanding the raised beds to have it all in one place, our backyard.

As all gardeners are, I am still learning when it comes to growing food. Of course, I’ve grown things like peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, green beans, squashes, lettuces etc but I have yet to have a harvest that I can really put food away and stock up with my own produce.

While we have fresh food all summer, the rest of the year I am still shopping for our fresh food. So that’s where Misfits comes in.

Misfits Market

We love Misfits Market! This is a company that was started in Philadelphia, working with farmers to sell their not so pretty but still good produce. You may not believe it but a lot of food goes to waste because it isn’t “pretty” and can’t be sold in the grocery store. So while most of the food that Misfits provides isn’t attractive, or is simply surplus, it’s all organic and non-gmo.

Not only do we love the produce provided by Misfits, we love what they stand for and their prices are outstanding! Not to mention, their produce is fresher than what I have found in the big stores because their food doesn’t sit in the store or storage. It comes from the farmers they work with right to us!

Misfits started with fresh produce from farmers but they also carry meats, cheeses, milks, pantry items, and more. All so that this food that is still good, doesn’t go to the landfill. I love their take on food and low waste.

If you want to try out Misfits, you can try them at this link and save $15 on your first order! You won’t regret it!

Salvage Store AKA The Bent & Dent

When our oldest son was a baby we started shopping at local, Amish owned salvage stores. Recently, I’ve heard them be referred to as Bent & Dents.

Our local salvage stores offer pantry items at massive discounts due to surplus, slightly damaged boxes, and best by dates. We have been able to save money on name brand pantry and personal items like cereal, crackers, flour, snacks, canned goods, coffee, shampoo, band aids, oils, seasonings, noodles, jarred pasta sauces, juices, diapers, formula, paper products etc.

We have been shopping at salvages stores since 2013 but in the past year or so we’ve transitioned to buying all of our pantry items there. Every single trip we are able to save hundreds of dollars on these goods to fill our pantry space.

My best find was Raos brand spaghetti sauce, our favorite, which is about $8 a jar at the big store. I found jars for $1.29 each. You know I bought them all!

I have a post on salvage stores you can read here.

If you are looking for salvage stores in your area, google “salvage groceries near me” to find local stores. I also found this website that lists stores in your state.

Buying Local

So I talked about growing our own produce, shopping for produce and pantry items, but what about meat?

About 7 years ago we started buying beef and pork from a long time family friend. He raises beef and pork and sells it and we love everything we have got from him. We love knowing how the animals were raised, what they were eating, how they were handled and the environment they were raised in.

Last year, however, we purchased 2 cows and they are being raised at my father and brother in laws farm. My brother in law also started raising hogs along with the cows. So we have beef from our own cows, pork we purchased from his hogs, and my husbands cousin raises meat chickens that we purchase from her.

We love knowing that we have somewhat of a hand raising our own meat. We’ve interacted with the cow that is in our freezer, our beloved Carla the Cow, the hogs that are also in our freezer, and I had the opportunity to help butcher and process the chickens we eat.

Dairy

As of now, the only thing we are purchasing from the big stores is our dairy. We do have our own eggs from our chickens. But as far as milk, butter, cheese, sour cream, and cream, we are purchasing that from Misfits or the store. However, we just found a farm that offers non homogenized milk that is local to us so we will be looking into that.

I would love to have a dairy cow, but being on half an acre within village limits I don’t think that’s a possibility! Lol! Not to mention that having a dairy cow is a huge commitment that I am not ready for.

My plan is to hopefully try this milk, use is for milk, cream and try my hand at making butter.

Cleaning Products

This post was mainly about food but I also wanted to share about our cleaning products. We started purchasing our cleaning products from Melaleuca aka The Wellness Box. These are clean, non toxic, chemical free products that I am obsessed with!

After purchasing products from Melaleuca, I went through and compared ingredients with the products we had in the cupboards and I was blown away! What we had on our shelves were filled with twice the amount of ingredients all which were chemicals!! I was shocked and honestly disgusted I was using these around my children.

You can find the website for Melaleuca here, if you have questions or would like to make a purchase please reach out to me and I will help you where I can! 🙂

You can read this blog post about The Wellness Box here

So there you have it, how we stopped shopping at the big stores and started shopping small and local to buy our food.

Of course, I think it goes without saying that we still shop at places like Amazon because we can’t get everything local. But the point of this post was to share where we get our food from, instead of the grocery store and I hope that it gives you some ideas so that you, too may step away from the grocery store.

And the final thought, the deeper we get into this homesteading life, the more we want to step away from society and into our own world of real food, real products, real life. I think we are headed in the right direction.

Until next time,