The other week, I hit one of those perfect storms: I simultaneously ran out of shampoo, toothpaste, Zyrtec, aspirin, Q-tips, makeup sponges, and a host of other bathroom products. A mere $150 later at Duane Reade and I had restocked—some items for the next 30 days (like the Zyrtec), others for the next 30 weeks (perhaps even longer, given how many Q-tips come in one box). The number seems high, but it could easily have been double that given that drugstores are the shopping equivalent to pasta: play your cards right and you can have a light, healthy meal—though more often than not you’re staring down a cheesy, buttery calorie bomb.
Chances are you’re not going to be clearing out the makeup aisles or picking up every As-Seen-on-TV product each time you go to CVS. All the same, you’re not going to do what Kristen Wiig’s Suze Orman parody on Saturday Night Live says and save money on self-tanner by sitting “in a bathtub with 12 beef bouillon cubes overnight.” The problem, however, is the sheer number of things you can buy from your local Rite Aid or Walgreens.
While drugstores trace their roots back to the colonial era in America, it wasn’t until the last century that stores moved beyond medical supplies into selling consumer goods—primarily health and beauty products. Charles Walgreen opened his first store in 1901, which sold both pharmaceuticals and household goods like pots and pans. Conversely, consumer goods store CVS opened its first pharmacy department in 1967. The convenience has expanded to the point where you can buy shoes, whiffle ball sets, Godiva chocolates, picture frames, lamps, batteries, neti pots, wine, eggs, and the New Yorker while you wait for your prescription to be refilled. Consumers constantly stop in for that “one quick thing” and come out armed with greeting cards to carry them through the next year’s worth of holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries. How do you balance efficiency in these one-stop shops with going overboard?
Know When to Buy
Just as you know when to replace your milk, your makeup and skin care products all have their own inherent use-by dates. Cosmetics “expire” because those used past their expiration date can give you a nasty breakout, infection, or worse. Preparing to replace your medicine cabinet’s contents just as you do your refrigerator will help you to plan your budget accordingly. Liquid face makeup like foundation should be tossed after six months, powders can last up to two years (and if you can make a powder compact last that long, all the more power to you). You can also get two years’ mileage out of your eye pencils and shadows, along with lipsticks, lip balms and glosses, and fragrances. Keep the lids on your shampoo, conditioner, hair gel, and hairspray tight, and you could use them for a year.
Other products, however, are not so forgiving. FDA-regulated skin care products like acne creams, Cortizone, Tiger Balm, and sunscreen ought to have clearly defined expiration dates. Take them seriously, as they are often less effective after this date. A good rule of thumb for unregulated or undated products is six months—which means, yes, you do have to buy a new bottle of Coppertone each year even if you barely go through it in the course of a summer. Liquid eyeliners and mascara are the shortest-lived members of the family, however, with a time frame of about three months. Any longer and bacteria starts to flourish in those dark, wet tubes.
Take stock of the products you have and spend a Saturday afternoon plotting out what needs to be replaced when. If you want to be super organized about it, you can set up reminders in your Blackberry or Google calendars when it’s time to restock. Also pay attention to how often you go through longer-shelf-life products. Most people never have to worry about their shampoo expiring, so instead be aware of how much you use and how quickly you use it. Same goes for goods without expiration dates—like toilet paper, paper towels, Kleenex, and Band-Aids—and items like loofahs and toothbrushes that require replacement after a given amount of wear and tear.
And speaking of greeting cards, purchasing seasonal items like Christmas cards, Halloween costumes, and Easter baskets immediately following the holiday is a great way to cash in on discounts that often hover in the 50% off range. If you have the space to store items like this for a year, you can cash in big (and avoid spending more when you get caught up in shopping crunches like the Christmas rush).
Know What to Buy
As I mentioned before, the convenience of drugstores is that they have increasingly become one-stop shops for household goods. My recent drugstore bender restocked my bathroom and purse stash of first-aid and other in-case-of-emergency needs. I could have gone further and picked up some groceries, a DVD of Easy A, replacement headphones for my iPod, and several organizers for my cupboards.
Many of the items are necessities to be purchased down the line (okay, not Easy A). However, I know that I’m not going to get the best price on oatmeal, bread, eggs, or milk at Duane Reade compared to Trader Joe’s or my favorite grocery store. The cheapest cabinet organizers I’ve found are at Muji and the Container Store. And I have a Best Buy credit card with rewards points that I can put toward replacing my headphones (or Easy A).
That’s because stores like Best Buy, Trader Joe’s, and the Container Store cater specifically to items like electronics, groceries, and organizational items. Even if I don’t get the best prices there on certain items, I know that I’m going to get a better price there than at a more generalized store like Rite Aid.
Examine your options for the items you buy. Personal finance website www.learnvest.com ran an informal study last year that compared prices of frequently purchased items—both house and name brand—found at San Diego-area Walgreens, Target, CVS, Wal-Mart, and Safeway. Out of 26 items, Wal-Mart came out on top for the lowest prices on 21 items like lotion, Advil, antacid, and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Target came next with 16 lowest prices (some tied with Wal-Mart and other stores, accounting for the math), beating the Waltons on items like Sara Lee bread, peanut butter, and canned peaches. Near the bottom of the list was Walgreens, beating out all other stores only on Folgers or Maxwell House coffee and tying with the big box stores on two other items. And at rock bottom, CVS scored 0.
This may not be typical of every geographic area—especially for New Yorkers, as we currently don’t have a Wal-Mart in our area. But to give you an idea of the real numbers at play: if you were to average out the price per each item on Learnvest’s list (factoring in that some items were not available at all stores), each item at Wal-Mart cost $2.65 to CVS’s $5.04. Similarly, Target’s magic number was $3.02, compared to Walgreens’s $5.03.
Depending on your geographic location, those big box stores may not be the most convenient. A New Yorker, for example, probably is not going to run to the Brooklyn Target every time they need hand soap and cotton balls. But if you can use some of that planning ahead discussed above and you know you’ll run out of several necessities at the same time, you can part with a Sunday afternoon to stock up. My husband and I save big by buying our paper towels, dishwasher tablets, and toilet paper in bulk since our use of those three items is as inevitable as death and taxes. They’ll even refill your prescriptions.
Know How to Buy
Like a grocery store (and especially like a grocery store’s temptation-laden checkout aisle), drugstores require a set of horse blinders and an unflinching list to remind you of what you went in for. Sure, occasionally you may remember that you’re also running low on toothpaste, but generally impulse purchases are far less pragmatic. (Not to sound like a broken record or anything, but: Easy A.)
Be judicious with your drugstore runs. Make your mantra “Get in and get out.” If possible, avoid picking up a basket—or worse, one of those new baskets that rolls along like a little trolley. Feeling the weight of each item in your hands as you shop will make you a more conscious shopper—and leave you less likely to pick up a bag of Twizzlers “just because” or a bottle of body wash “since it’s on sale.”
Become a rewards member for every drugstore you shop at—and if you’re shopping at one that doesn’t offer a program like CVS’s Extra Care or Duane Reade’s Flex Rewards, find a nearby store that does. Drugstores are unavoidable in most consumers’ lives, so take the free money that you can eventually collect for your loyalty to one or two stores. You can get a card the size of a key fob, which makes remembering to use it a snap, and when you get a $5 back coupon, stick it immediately in your wallet to use as cash the next time you’re in the store. Some places like Duane Reade even let you apply the savings to the same transaction that earns you the coupon.
While we’re on the topic of coupons: find them . . . clip them . . . use them. Stephanie Nelson, a.k.a. the Coupon Mom, has created a massive aggregation of deals on her website, www.CouponMom.com. Signing up is free, and you can see all of the deals sorted by grocery and drugstore (among some other fab categories). And remember that you can combine store and product coupons, meaning that if Walgreens is offering a store coupon for 50 percent off of a $2 bottle of St. Ives’s lotion and you also have a $1 off coupon from St. Ives for any of their products . . . well, you do the math.
