There are many perks in my life that I can attribute to being an adult. I own my own house and car, I can stay up as late as I want, I can plan and take vacations, but buying groceries isn’t fun for me at all. That task I view as a chore. And as with most tasks that I see as a chore I just want to be done and over with it as soon as possible.
Fortunately, my husband goes grocery shopping with me because like me he sees grocery shopping as a chore and detests it as well. And since misery loves company we go as a team. For us this trip to the food market used to loom over us all week, it felt daunting. We felt that it would take forever, but as we often remarked, “We have to go to the store. We have nothing to eat!” So we would go, often hungry and cranky and wander around the market trying to decide what looked appetizing for dinner. And you know what? It did feel like it took forever!
But because we hated it so much we started to try and make the task easier. First, we have a discussion at home when we are relaxed about what we would both like to eat that week. We both contribute ideas and then decide on several meals. Once the meals are decided we either look at recipes to determine what ingredients to add to our shopping list or we already know how to make the meals and just look through our pantry and fridge to know what to add to the list. The key is to organize the shopping list according to aisle or category. I make sections such as: produce, dry goods, meats, refrigerated, frozen and misc. Then we start at one end of our grocery store and work our way to the other end. In our store produce is at one end and frozen at the other. So my husband and I start at produce and work our way through our list crossing off items as they get added to the cart until we finish up in the frozen section.
Organizing the list and deciding together what meals we are going to make has made the chore of grocery shopping more bearable for both of us. But one of the best tips I have for a successful shopping trip is to never go hungry. I often have to eat a small snack before we leave so that we can stay on track and be able to stick to our list. Happy shopping!
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