BOGO: Buy One, Guilt Comes Free

With a fixed income and rising prices, I try to be thrifty. So I hunt for sales—especially BOGOs. But BOGOs can overwhelm your storage, sneak into your waistline, and hijack your cholesterol.

My apartment has limited storage. If the BOGO is something small, like a pint of blueberries, I’m golden. But when it’s a 12-mega-roll pack of paper towels —and I have to take two? That’s half my closet gone, not to mention a countertop takeover.

Then there are perishables. I can’t resist romaine lettuce BOGOs. I vow to eat salad every day for lunch. You know how that goes. One salad in, I’m already bored. Two weeks later, I’m tossing green mush. So I feel twice as guilty:  for wasting food and for not eating salad.

And let’s not ignore health. We all know saturated fat is the enemy. But when Alfredo sauce goes BOGO—especially Bertolli, which has a “superior” rating—my willpower flees. I grab two tubs, rationalizing I’ll freeze one (note: not recommended). So instead of wasting it, I whip up my version of SOS (stuff” on a shingle) using Alfredo and ham. Pretty good, I’m a sucker for creamy sauces. My doctor would cringe. It’s okay occasionally, but two containers in two weeks? EEK.

I justified it because blueberries were also BOGO. Blueberries are healthy. That cancels out Alfredo, right? My doctor would say I’m hallucinating.

Still, I love blueberries. Once, while camping in Michigan, we bought a crate (12 pints) and ate them all in a week. Didn’t even make it to the freezer. Though I did give five pints to neighbors. That counts as generosity, right?

This week’s indulgent BOGO? Dove Minis. How can I say no to that? I swear I’ll eat just one a day. But every time I open the freezer, those boxes wink at me like chocolate sirens.

Speaking of Dove Minis, have you noticed shrinkflation? (1) Dove Minis used to come 14 per pack. Now it’s 10. Same price. That’s a 40% hike. At least they’re up-front about it. They shrunk the box too, unlike other products, where the package stays the same but the contents vanish.

Paper goods have all shrunk; tissues down from 65 to 60, TP from 264 sheets to 242. Candy, cereal, coffee, cosmetics, pizza… nothing’s safe. (2)

But even worse than shrinkflation is skimpflation—when companies cheapen the product. Like using high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar. Or thinning out Scott’s 1000-sheet toilet paper (people really raised a stink). Campbell’s Cream of Potato soup? Now it’s mostly water with a few potato bits floating around. (3)

Companies hope we won’t notice. Maybe. But I stopped buying my favorite candy bar in the ’70s when they cheapened the chocolate coating. It stopped feeling like a decadent treat. Warning Dove Minis, I’ll notice if you degrade your chocolate coating.

Speaking of storage issues, our community bulletins are already warning us to prep for hurricane season. That means stocking up on water, batteries, and non-perishable food.

The internet hurricane supply list includes pasta. Really? If there’s no power, how am I supposed to cook pasta? I like crunchy snacks, but uncooked linguine is going a bit far.

So I combed this week’s grocery BOGO list for non-perishables. No healthy stuff like peanut butter, tuna, or canned fruit. Just Leinenkugel’s beer, Oreos, and Doritos. I’m not sure what a week of that would do to my bloodwork, but I’m guessing the results wouldn’t be pretty.

Then there’s the matter of freezer capacity. If we lose power, the staff comes by with contractor bags to empty your freezer. But do they clean up the melted ice cream and meat juice? Nope. That’s all yours.

They say to fill your tub with water for flushing. Great idea, except in our retirement community tubs are rare. When you reach the age where lifting a leg over the edge feels like a gymnastics event, you opt for a walk-in shower. Before they released me from the Care Center, they even tested whether I could step over the shower lip.

A neighbor said he’d scoop flushing water from the pond. Ugh. That pond has slimy biological hazards, not to mention the occasional alligator. Here’s a better tip: fill your washing machine. Ours is six feet from the toilet, has clear water and I've never seen an alligator in the washing machine.

No way I'm taking water out of our pond

BOGOs and hurricane prep present real challenges when storage space is tight. It’s a constant juggle between saving money, staying safe, and not turning your closets into a Fibber McGee disaster zone.

Ah, the life of a retiree—where every sale is a puzzle and every BOGO feels like both a win and a warning.

References

1. Kelly Ann Smith, Smaller Sizes, Same Price: How Shrinkflation Affects Consumers, Forbes.com, April 26, 2022

2. Gary Guthrie, Here are the products most affected by 'shrinkflation', Consumer Affairs.com, May 6, 2024

3. Karen Raugust, The Year Ahead: Shrinkflation and skimpflation, Bluebook.com, February 6, 2024