Price Books?

This week, one of my projects has been to update my food storage requirements and create a price book. If you haven't heard of a price book before, it's just a listing of things that you have in your pantry and what the best price you've paid for them is. Some are very elaborate, and some are very simple. Mine is on the simple side, really. I use a food storage program to inventory and track the usage in my pantry items, and it will generate my shopping list for me, if I have all of the quantities and usage entered in correctly. It was a big project to get everything entered, and turn off all of the pre-loaded pantry items that I don't use or store. I've been working on it all week! But, I honestly feel that I will benefit from this now, since I can now literally just print of my list and go. I even put my list into a three-pronged folder, and used the folder pockets to hold my coupons so I didn't forget to use them! How handy!

The point of the price book is that it will save you money. How?
1) You have a list of things that you know you use routinely, so you don't impulse buy new things.
2) You know the best price you've paid for an item, so when you see the item on sale, you kow if it's actually a sale or not.

For the first week I used it (this week), I did find that there were multiple items that I had bought at higher prices in the past on sale for cheaper this week. I also found a few that looked like they were being sold for a good price, but when I consulted the book I had with me, I found that it wasn't the best price after all, so I can wait until next week to buy the item (Or whenever it's on sale again!).

Now, if I could only get my pantry under control and organized so I can find everything! That's a big job I'll have to leave for another day.