BJ's Wholesale Club -- and contest!

First of all now that I'm back from the craziness of the holidays, I'd like to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season and are starting 2010 with a great start!

Now, on to the topic of this blog. Before the holidays, MyBlogSpark, General Mills and BJ's offered me a trial membership to BJ's as well as a $25 gift card. My husband and I aren't currently members of BJ's and given our New Years Resolution to save money on groceries this seemed like something interesting to check out. So, we agreed to sign up for the Spark and check out the club.

Overall, there can be some very good deals there for the smart shopper. However, you have to be careful with bulk stores, because it's easy to get sucked in thinking that a large quanity means it's a good deal, or that you're definitely going to use all of something. And, of course the fact that if you're set in the products you use, you might not want to compromise and buy something similar just because it's a good deal -- if you don't like it you have to use an awful lot of it before it's gone! Also, considering that we're constrained by shopping gluten free, I was interested to see what we could find.

Now -- many of the things at BJ's would be a lot better for us if we owned a house or a large freezer. Unfortunately our apartment doesn't have a whole lot of storage space, so we can't really stock up on six month's worth of toilet paper or tissues. At least, unless we wanted to let them do double duty as furniture! So, alas, we stayed away from most household items -- we did find very good deals on Clorox Wipes (I use them for everything) and laundry detergent. I'll give a shoutout to Woollite Dark since that's what I ended up picking up, at a much better deal than at Walmart.

Next, off to the food aisles. They didn't carry any of the pet supplies that we use (we buy Wellness canned dog food), but there were some interesting finds that were gluten free. Staples like rice, pasta sauce (they had Classico multipacks that are labelled gluten free), and salsa, etc. were all decent deals. There were also items that weren't necessarily good deals, like family size packages of corn chips for about the same price as when they go on sale at Price Chopper. Since it's after New Years and we're trying to be good we did give the candy aisle a wide berth, but normally we'd have found quite a bit there we'd like. ;-)

Overall -- even for a gluten free household a BJ's membership can be worthwhile, provided you have ample storage space for bulk items and keep an eye out for what's a good deal and what might not necessarily be good.

Now -- onto the good stuff. Since everyone is trying to save money after the holidays, I'm pleased to announce that MyBlogSpark, BJ's and General Mills are offering a $25 BJ's gift card to one of my readers. If you're interested here is how to enter:

• Receive one entry by leaving a comment on this blog entry before Saturday, January 16th. And entrants -- grad school is starting up, and I just don't have time to track you down. If you're serious about entering leave me some way to contact you -- an e-mail address preferably, or a link to an ACTIVE blog. It can be obfuscated but if I have no idea who made a comment and have no way to contact you, I won't count it.
  
• Winner will be picked at random and announced on this blog.
  

Good luck!