To Market, to Market…
Perhaps you are responsible for all of your family’s grocery shopping, or perhaps you are like I was just a few years ago…I hardly did any of the shopping and was worried that I’d be terrible at it when I had a home of my own! Either way, it is good to learn about some shopping habits and ideas to make your trip to the store easier and more organized!
We used to just write our shopping list out on a regular piece of paper but then a few years ago, we made up a simple categorized shopping list. It was up on the fridge so that we could write down things as we needed them, and had four columns:
- Co-op
- Paper Goods
- Grocery, and
- Other
Then we had a list for each of those categories, with everything we would possible buy in that category, so that when it was time to shop, we could go through them to make sure we had everything. It was easier than racking your brain every time it was shopping day, but sometimes having that many lists to keep track of was kind of a bother! A couple of years later, we made a shopping list on a Word document with the things we buy regularly already on the list, along with empty spaces for the irregular things, and a place to write how many of that thing we needed. It is even easier, because as you run out of things you can just put a checkmark beside it on the list. Not to mention, you only have one piece of paper to carry around the house as you check the soap, the toilet paper, the flour, the envelopes, the paper towel, etc, etc!
Some of the categories we have are:
Canned Fruit
Canned Vegetables
Other Canned Goods
Baking Items (chocolate chips are at the top of this list for us!!!)
Refrigerated
Frozen
Produce
Condiments
Pasta
Other
Paper Products
Household
Personal Items
Office Supplies
Health Food Store
Krogers
Co-op
It has saved us so much time and frustration! We had seen different itemized shopping lists in planners and organizers, but none of them quite fit what our family needed. You may not be doing any grocery shopping now, but when you do, consider making yourself an itemized list!
About The Author
Post topics: food, homekeeping, homemaking, tips
I love the idea of a list like this. My dad is the one who does all the shopping in our house. My mom absolutely hates shopping. She would do it, but my dad likes shopping and is a good husband, so he does it for her. I often go with my dad because he doesn’t really know what the difference between confectioners sugar and granulated is, lol. We often take a small list of items, and then pick up whatever is on sale at the store that isn’t on the list. I would love to do the shopping all the time, but I am only 15 and I can’t drive yet. Someday. I enjoy grocery shopping.
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Jessica's reply:
March 17th, 2010 at 11:16 pm
I like grocery shopping, too! I didn’t really start doing it much either until I was practicing my driving when I had my permit, so I usually went along with Mommy on our shopping trips to practice :) That was so much fun! It still is :)
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I rarely write shopping lists as I seem to buy the same things each week. I do buy multiple items if they are on sale (and there is a big saving to be made). Ever now and again I buy something I already have in the cupboard and an example of this was pickles – each week I thought I didn’t have any at home and bought an extra jar. I ended up with 5 jars at home (now all used!!). I also shop fortnightly and try to not do any in the middle week, expect for fruit and vegetables. This can also help with savings.
it is interesting how families organise themselves!
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Jessica's reply:
March 19th, 2010 at 9:18 am
Oh that is funny about the pickles! We try and do the same thing, too, and stock up on stuff we use a lot :)
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What does “krogers” mean? :)
When I lived with my parents, we went to grocery shopping on Fridays, the whole family. If we needed something urgently, we went to very small village shop (my childhood home is in deep countryside so car rides for fun were and are minimal, it takes 30-45 minutes to drive to town).
Nowadays I live with my husband almost in the central of a large city (in Finnish scale, this would be a very small town in Europe or in Americas). We do similarly one bigger grocery shopping per week and the couple smaller ones if needed. Usually together but if we have to choose, it is usually me who does that. I know what we need and what we are going to need later. When we met, my now-husband usually went to grocery store once or even twice a _day_. Still even now if he is hungry when he does grocery shopping or even worse, he is just eaten: he doesn’t buy food for next day. Just enough to eat at once or not even that, if his stomach is full. This is something he often jokes about himself, sometimes old habits are very strong.
Even though we now live surrounded by grocery stores, I don’t want to do shopping too often. It is more expensive in a long run and takes time, we don’t have a car so we need to walk or take a bus.
And that one thing we regularly forget to buy is… toilet paper! I always hide some rolls for emergency moments ;)
And why we forget? Because we do write a list but we don’t remember to take it with us…
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Jessica's reply:
March 19th, 2010 at 9:15 am
Krogers is the name of a chain of grocery stores in America :) We do a lot of shopping at Walmart, but Krogers has some things that Walmart does not :)
It was so neat to read about your shopping experiences, and funny to read about how your husband doesn’t buy enough when he is full already :D I’ve heard of people buying more when they’re hungry, but not the other way around!
Once we forgot our list at home, too…and the store is 20 min. away, so we had to call home and have someone read it all off to us so we could write it down again! Grrr! It’s a long list, too!
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Kristiina K.'s reply:
March 21st, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Thank you for the clarification :) I thought it was a general name for some group of items I just didn’t know.
I am myself a model example of person who shops more when hungry. I _know_ I will take unnecessary food into the shopping basket. Usually “small food”, pies and pastries and juice boxes, something I don’t usually buy otherwise. And even I know I don’t really need them, I can’t help myself. My stomach controls me entirely :D
I think the best way for us to do grocery shopping is when he has just eaten and I am hungry, we could balance our shopping!
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