One roundup a week. Written on Sunday night, posted Monday.
07/27/2026 · Renata
Every year the same thing happens. Lids are stocked and ordinary priced in early summer, and by the second week of September they are picked over and the only ones left are the wide mouth in the fancy finish at twice the price. A box of twelve regular-mouth lids was $3.49 this week. In September I have paid $6.79 for the same box, in the same store, two aisles from where they sat in July.
Lids do not go off in any meaningful sense if you keep them dry and flat. This is the least glamorous saving on the site and one of the most reliable.
Sixty cents to a dollar each against $12 to $14 for a case of twelve new. Check the rim with your fingertip for chips — a nicked rim will not seal and you will not find out until the batch has cooled. I turned down four jars out of eighteen on that test and still came out well ahead.
Running the hob for a ninety-minute water bath in July also means the air conditioning is fighting it. I have no clean number for that, and I am not going to invent one. But it is why I do tomatoes in one long evening rather than four small ones, and why I do them at all only when I have been given the tomatoes or the price is under $1/lb.
Renata. I shop for two adults and a teenager, mostly at one regional chain and a discount grocer four miles apart.
I have kept a price book since 2019. That is the only reason any of this is useful.
If I would not have bought it at full price within the month, a discount on it is not a saving. Most of what I skip each week fails that one test.