who says you have to skimp on the good stuff?

going from just 2 people to 6 people has been a huge adjustment for our budget. and i probably get more questions about how we keep food in our house with 4 growing boys over any other question. and honestly the only real answer is God. as much fun as i have with all my bargain shopping i humbly come before God asking him to guide me and lead me so that i may serve my family and be a good steward of what he has given us. when you surrender your budget to the Lord he somehow provides more than you could ever imagine. and he doesn't skimp either. people always ask "if you buy store brand it is SOOOO much cheaper." and i agree that store brand is cheaper than regular price for a name brand. but when i have a coupon, it's BOGO and i get money back (making it practically free) why would i NOT buy it. here is a few random pics of what my food storage looks like (this is at the end of our week before i grocery shop on monday).

this is my little pantry i got for mother's day. it doesn't really hold much but it is great for canned goods and a few everyday foods.

i try to keep only food that is currently open and we eat on a regular basis in our cabinets (we only have 2 cabinets with food because we are so low on storage space in our kitchen).
the space above my cabinets is my storage. i keep my stockpile up here. you can see i have tons of cake mixes, ketchup, mac & cheese, juice, pasta and a few other things. most everything on this shelf i either got for free or less that $1 a piece. it's nice to know i always have something on hand. you can also see that most of the stuff on the shelf is name brand stuff.
one of my favorite steal-of-a-deal is shampoo and body wash. now, i know there are a lot of really cheap shampoos and soaps out there but they all stink or don't do a very good job. so i love that i can get my favorite $8 bottle of shampoo or body wash for about $.25 each. this is my small section of toiletries (10 bottles of body wash, 4 bottles shampoo, 12 sticks of deodorant, 2 bottles of dish soap, and the new lysol hand soap thingie). this has all been accumulated in the past month since after the flood we were able to give all our stocked up toiletries to people who needed them. everything on this shelf was less that $.50 each.
one awesome surprise we got this week was my parents dropping of a stack of groceries. my mom hit up a food lion going out of business and everything was 60% off. way to go mom! here is what she got for us!

i've added a few buttons on the side of blogs that i use to help me keep my food/toiletries budget under control. if you have any questions please feel free to comment or email. i'm more than happy to share more specifics of how i can save so much!