Good morning everyone! In getting my grocery list made for my latest trip to the store, I wondered…..what does everyone else do?
I often have at least one child along for the shopping fiasco trip. Here lately, it is usually just little W (4 yrs old), as the older two are in school. He does a great job “helping” and chatting with everyone he sees. He especially favors elderly people, who, in turn, absolutely love that a little one is taking the time to make friends with them. We are normally in and out of the store fairly quickly, depending on the amount of food we need. This has been made possible because I took the time to create a more organized grocery list!
I do most of my shopping at our local Kroger store. I don’t know about you, but I used to show up with my disaster of a grocery list, often running back for things I skipped over or forgot to put on the list to begin with. NOT. FUN. Especially with kids getting antsy. The complaining soon began, and eventually the misbehaving. Insert extra stress. At that time, at least my coupons had some order to them, or I would have definitely pulled all my hair out, leaving the store completely bald.
Then I had the idea. On one of my trips to Kroger, I wrote down, in order, a very brief description of what is in each aisle. This task, of course, made easier by the signs the store has hanging in each aisle. You may get strange looks from other shoppers while doing this. But with a coupon binder and my own bags, the curious looks of strangers no longer phase me.
When I went home, I created a grocery list template. I created sections for each aisle and put them in the order I would travel them in the store. This is the list I use, if you are interested, or would like a starting point. There are 2 lists per page.
The list is printed and hangs on the front of our refrigerator. Any time we run out of something, or need a specific new item, it is added to the list. It makes it easy for hubby and my kids to help make sure we buy everything we need. Genius, right? I sure thought so. I couldn’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. I’m sure others have a similar system, but, to be honest, I didn’t look around. Some times it’s nice to do things your way 🙂
I can’t say enough how much easier this makes a trip through the store! With my list and coupons organized shopping is much less stressful and so much quicker!
Do you have any tips for grocery shopping? I’d love to hear from you!!
Creating My Niche 
For folks with Smartphones, there’s a great app called AnyList. You can create grocery lists (among other types of lists) and save them, meaning if there’s a list of ingredients you need for a particular go-to recipe, just save it and pull it up the next time you’d like to make it. The app also helps organize items by what section they are in the store (produce, dairy, meats, etc.). It’s pretty handy!
Very cool! Now if I only had a smart phone 😉 But on that subject, I read about a cool coupon app you may also be interested in. You can find the post here
I feel like I’m always at the grocery store so I know it’s layout well. I make my list and go over it before going into a section or aisle, get what I need, then before leaving that section/aisle, I go over the list again to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I try to go several times a week so produce and meats won’t spoil, so my list usually isn’t very long. I’ve seen lists that are categorized but every store is different – so good idea on making your own list store specific!
Thank you! I live in a rural area, so I only go to the grocery once a week at the most, more often than this wouldn’t be practical for us. I needed to do something, so far, so good 🙂
I also skim my coupons before going and put them in order (the ones I plan to use) of when I will hit them in the store! When you hit the same store every week you learn the aisles quickly! I had such a rough time when our Kroger opened their new Krogers as I had to re-learn my aisles!!