^^I thought of this! Because I will use their almond butter, etc. There may be cases where the store brand IS the best brand. I guess that sort of means what base product - so peanut butter, yogurt, kleenex, whatever - MUST you have a certain brand of - and which can you just default to what is cheapest.
I will agree on the Saran Wrap.
i second @maya54 on garbage bags! The best mac and cheese I ever found was IGA brand and about 33 cents a box (back when I had littles). Secret deoderant is necessary IMO.
San-J tamari soy sauce and Reynolds Aluminum foil. S&B curry powder.
Adding my 2 cents to the ketchup discussion: Trader Joe’s Organic is by far my favorite.
I buy all of my garbage bags at Aldi…I’m guessing that would be considered generic as it’s their brand name on the box. The are strong and every bit as good as ones that cost three times as much.
Hellman’s Mayo always name brand.
Reynolds wrap. Any other foil is not terrific.
Dawn dishwashing liquid. The others just don’t cut the grease.
Heinz ketchup,
Darigold or Kerrygold butter
Gold Medal all-purpose flour, King Arthur for bread flour, Albers Corn Meal, Bob’s Red Mill for other stuff
PG Tips tea
Best Foods Mayonnaise
Campbell’s tomato soup
TreeTop Apple juice
Non-food - one of the sure-fire, must buys are Viva paper towels. We were known by the girls’ friends as the parents with the good paper towels. Others are Dawn (the smell of everything else makes me want to hurl), Bar Keepers Friend, ScotchBrite sponges, and Tide. My husband is partial to Safeguard soap.
Dawn dish soap makes my hands break out, dry up and go scaly. That said, the cheaper dish soap is well, cheap!
So, we use palmolive.
Speaking of dishes - only Finish Quantum works well in our dishwasher. We’re on well (hard) water and nothing else (including Cascade) gets our dishes clean without leaving a residue. When I discovered Finish Quantum I fell in love and only tried others a couple times afterward to be sure it wasn’t just a weird one time thing.
We wash so few dishes by hand that the cheap stuff works. We have Ajax there now - I just looked.
I haven’t bought garbage bags in eons. We recycle or compost almost everything. What doesn’t go into those fits just fine in the urban tumbleweed bags we get from the grocery stores/Walmart.
The hard thing for me is that I’m doing a bit of grocery shopping for my mom now and she’s very particular about what brands of everything she wants. I have to write down very specific details since she cares far more than I do and we differ some on the things we both care about. Sometimes I use my phone to take pictures - nice, helpful trick. The only non-brand name things she has are OTC meds. For that she trusts her Drug Store brand (Kinneys). Hmm, actually eggs have to be the cheapest available too - totally opposite of us since we do certified humane when we buy store bought eggs. Usually we eat our own from our chickens though. She’s not fond of those (too rich, too dirty, or the occasional blood spot grosses her out, etc) so we can’t bring ours along with us.
She does like Herrs potato chips, Berks hot dogs, and the local potato rolls we get from around here. Those are things we always had to bring with us - or had to anyway when she was in better shape. Times have changed some now at the end of her life.
My mother was a brand name queen, but I’m not quite as loyal has her.
Heniz ketchup
Puffs tissues
Reynolds aluminum foil
Finish tabs
There are others I prefer, but will occasionally buy other brands:
Hellman’s mayo
Bounty paper towels
Charmin TP
Snyder’s pretzels
When my friends mother died her friends did the usual thing around here which is to buy supplies for the shiva house Including toilet paper. ( In Jewish tradition you have people go to the mourners house for up to a week after the funeral. Friends will make sure that the house is supplied with what it needs for all those people including food drink and paper goods). They bought one of the very pricy brands of TP. My friends husband and children were like “ Wow what is this great TP. Why don’t we always have it? It’s soooo much better”. She always bought the cheapest stuff out there thinking it didn’t make much of a difference. But she decided that if everyone could indeed tell and comment on it, it was time to become a devoted Cottenele family.
I’m a big Aldi’s shopper and prefer some of their brands to name brands.
But I always buy Tide free detergent and I’m a Finish Quantum user here also.
Heinz ketchup because H prefers it.
But I do buy organic no hormone chicken and cage free eggs. And when I can grill, locally sourced beef. And vegetables from the farmers market.
I buy charmin toilet paper but found an aldi substitute that is pretty similar.
I found store brand products to be consistently worse in quality than brand name products. This excludes Kirkland, Trader Joe and fancier/organic store brands like Private Selection, they are generally pretty good.
Best Foods and Hellmann Mayonnaise is the same formula.
About Tide Free, does this work as well as regular Tide? I’m kind of thinking it doesn’t. But it works a ton better than ALL Free. Haven’t tried the Arm & Hammer free yet.
I’m interested to hear what specific grocery store name brand items people think work great. It’s nice to substitute where possible! For instance, Trader Joe’s organic Marinara is great!
I always get a local mayo - Blue Plate. Hellman’s would be third, after Duke’s.
Puffs plus with aloe, because I have allergies and they are kinder to my skin.
2% Fage plain Greek yogurt. Not chalky! Full fat is great too, but a bit decadent.
I do like King Arthur flour. I recently bought Bobs red mill, and that’s a good company, but their equivalent flour didn’t have the light texture of KA.
Muir Glen canned tomatoes. The winner of a blind taste test at our house, and the other tomatoes were from Italy. Plus, Muir glen does not allow BPA in their can linings.
I don’ shop based on price, I shop based on convenience. I don’t cut coupons and almost all of my grocery shopping in TJ, therefore, I buy TJ brands except dog food; dog food is Bench & Field.
For papergoods and cleaning supplies, I shop in Costco about 3x a year
Why would Tide Free not work as well as regular Tide? It’s missing fragrance, not detergent. With my allergies, it’s a Free product. I do think Tide works a bit better than All.
I’m no food or brand maven, but with no exception on these items:
Heinz
Puffs Basic I think the lotion ones are slimy. Back to the allergies, I have Puffs in every room and the car.
Chapstick
Curel lotion
Swingset stapler
OEM toner cartridges
Good tools & mowers
Scotts toilet paper
Hmmmm, guess I’m pickier on goods than on food!
The nice thing about Being of a Certain Age is that I’ve tried and vetted lots of store-brand items and settled on what works for me and what doesn’t. Years ago, a friend announced that she wanted Kleenex tissue and no other kind, ever again. I thought about it and realized I agreed – not only with the Kleenex, but with the principle.
I do at least half my shopping at Trader Joe’s. Their half & half is one of the few that doesn’t have DSP, which I think changes the flavor when I use it in my coffee. I really like the TJ whole milk plain yogurt, which seems less sour than most plain yogurts. My son likes a lot of their cereals. I buy a lot of their other products, as well, although I’m not a fan of their soups, stocks or canned beans.
I buy Whole Foods brand coffee (and sometimes TJ, but prefer WF).
As for brand names, I buy Hellman’s mayo and Method Free laundry detergent. I use Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint soap for a lot of cleaning tasks. I buy Ezekiel bread (or make my own). When its available, I buy the Scott TP that doesn’t have the cores. I like Imagine brand soup stock.
I sometimes buy from farmers markets but I get suspicious when they have boxes of fruit or veggies that are in season in our area.
Aveeno lotion.
Sir Kensington sunflower mayo here. Expensive as heck and attracts my furry counter surfer (she would not eat it but I have had to throw away a couple of jars after she stuck her whiskered face in them).
For pistachios, only Kirkland signature brand will do. The others Costco sells are too salty and too overroasted.
I love this thread. For the first time ever, I bought off brand paper towels a few weeks ago. Never again. It’s kinda like that time I ventured to off brand tissues, nope. I don’t know why I don’t just throw the roll out and buy bounty again, lol.