Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Store Brands Work For Me

There are certain store brands that are always the best buy unless you have a great sale combined with coupons. I have experimented with different ones to see if they are any good. I'm not brand loyal at all and there are some items that the store brand works just as good. These are some of the ones I regularly use:

Soap: I'm not talking about fancy, smell good, moisturizing soap. Just plain old fashioned deodorant bath soap. We like Dial Gold. Usually the store brand of this is just as good. Recently Walgreens had their store brand of soap on sale 5 for $1.00. I haven't used their brand before and they were sold out of the gold. All they had left when I got there were the blue ones that "compare to Coast". I thought for 20 cents a bar, what did I have to lose? So I bought 5 bars for $1.00 and will definitely be buying it again. It works just as well as any I've used before. In fact, I like it alot.

Tea bags: The men at my house drink about a gallon of sweet tea a day. I have found that the Dollar General store brand of tagless tea bags work well. There are 100 bags in a box for $1.00. I like not having to remove the tags too. I'm sure that someone who drinks hot tea would not want this tea, but for the amount of tea that is consumed at my house this works for me.

Fabric Softener Sheets: The ones sold at Dollar Tree are the best deal. They have a box of 55 sheets for $1.00. I save even more by cutting them in half.

Rice: Walmart's brand of "converted rice" is good. It has to be the "Converted", not the cheapo one. The Walmart brand is much, much cheaper than the name brand converted rice and cooks well. Its a little over $1.00 a bag.

Its a good idea to experiment with some store brands for items that you're not totally brand loyal on. There are some store brands that aren't good at all and you might not like the ones I've listed, but purchasing these work for me!

Please share with me the store brands that you like and regularly use!

For more "Works For Me" ideas to to Rocks in My Dryer!

10 comments:

Mich said...

oh I am all about the store brands...so many that I can hardly think of them all. In general, I like the Meijer store brand for canned goods (beans, tomato paste,etc), paper products, etc. The one thing I haven't found a good store brand for is facial tissue. Anything but namebrand seems like sandpaper to me...

Michelle said...

I use Save A Lot cereal and applesauce. I love Aldi for almost everything we just don't have one in our area. I also use store brands on almost anything except peanut butter and zesta crackers. Happy homemaking!

Anonymous said...

Debbie,
I'm the same way in that I will buy a brand name product with a coupon only if it's cheaper. I'm trying not to focus as much on coupons for saving, as I think using several saving strategies really helps to be the most frugal. There are many products that are store brand that I think are just as good.

I would love to have Aldi's here, but we don't. I'm sure I would just adore that store.

To Mich, I've used CVS tissues and they are not really bad at all; I think they are decent. Maybe not as cushy as Puffs, but for the price, they are not sandpaper either.

Lori Harris said...

Mama, don't forget about Stove Top Stuffing. I think that's the only thing I am brand loyal to. Remember when you made the generic brand one time? Ick.

Rhonda said...

I like most store brands too. We are almost out of dryer sheets so I liked your tip about the Dollar Tree ones. Would you believe I found a dollar so I stopped at Dollar Tree and picked up a box. They had a bonus size, 55 sheets for $1. I opened them, loved the way they smell, and cut them all in half.
Those 110 sheets will last a long time at our house too.

Gayle said...

Generic is awesome! I love your idea about cutting the dryer sheets in half.

Anonymous said...

I stock up on the Sav-A-Lot cream soups,like mushroom,Chicken and celery. Taste the same to me as the name brand counter part. Actually once I was in Sav-A-Lot stocking up on them and another lady shopper told me she worked at a food factory that made cookies and they would stop the conveyor belt and switch the labels from the name brand to the generic brand. Same exact product! I'm sure that's not so on all products but I bet a lot of them are done that way.

Melinda

Little Penpen said...

Thanks for this post. I want to try Dollar General fabric sheets. I have just started tearing my sheets in half, thanks to you, and they work just as well! I agree with Blue Sky on the stuffing.... only Stove Top! (also, don't substitue Food Lion bread crumbs for Pepperide Farm... I tried that once, and was very disappointed!) We use Coast soap and love it.... I will look for the soap you are using now.

Milehimama @ Mama Says said...

I almost always buy whatever is cheapest, too. Once I looked in my pantry and every single thing was Great Value!
I do stick to Dawn dishwashing soap - our dishwasher broke and we are washing everytihng by hand, and the generics just didn't cut it - I was using 4 or 5 times the amount of Dawn I use. Fortunately, there are always coupons and sales at CVS/Walgreens! I also only use Purex laundry detergent because of allergies//sensitive skin. And I can only use Ivory soap (good thing that's pretty darn cheap too).

I can't help on the facial tissue question...we use generic toilet paper to wipe our noses. When a cold blows through our family we go through a crazy amount of tissue!

Remember when they recalled all the peanut butter? They recalled the Jif AND the WalMart generic because they were made at the same factory on the same line at the same time.

Anonymous said...

A fair amount of the time, the generic brands are made by the other brands anyway. I LOVE Costco brand. I am also a big fan of Meijer brand. Their organic line is awesome.

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