One aspect of homesteading and being frugal that is often both reviled and feted is bulk purchasing. Reviled as “hoarding” at times, or “just too expensive”, and feted as budget saving, if you can manage your finances for it.

In my case, I’m damned expensive to feed. Purchasing meat — and decent quality meat — gets expensive. That’s one reason I’m trying to raise some of our own. Still, good deals on meat can be had, especially if you pay attention.

This week, I had special reason to go looking: I had to replace my vacuum sealer, and I needed to put the new one through some paces to be sure I like it. Finding whole boneless ribeye for $6.49/lb? I can be down with that.

But an important part of bulk processing is labeling. However, even I fail to do it sometimes. To minimize that, I have a bunch of pre-printed labels:

These work well with the “one a month cooking” concept (if you don’t need the cooking instructions), for freezing leftovers, and for bulk freezing of meats, processed vegetables (diced onions, or pre-made sweet potatoes, for example).

I print them on Avery waterproof shipping labels, 2″x4″, which I also use for labeling the poultry and rabbits for sale. Mine are laser-only, but I believe there’s an inkjet version. I have found these to adhere well under freezing conditions (aka, a freezer) A direct link is below:

For those who’d like to use my label layout without fussing to make their own, here’s a PDF.