Unsolicited Advice: Quick! Before You Go to the Grocery Store

Check your supplies. What’s low?

What’s high/what do you have plenty of? It looks like I should make some lasagna the next time I can get ricotta for a good price.

What needs to be used? I need to use these avocados within the next few days. I know, what an awful problem to have!

Look over your grocery store flyer. What are the true deals this week? How do they match up with your supplies? I have been watching for Hellman’s Light Mayonnaise to go on sale for weeks. (Most items go on sale every six weeks or so.) I probably missed the last sale somehow, but this week it’s on special and we’re almost out. Mayo goes on the list. My list is one I started years ago when we got our first computer. It is arranged in the order of my favorite grocery store’s aisles and contains the things we typically buy. I can just print one and make notes on it for the current trip. Of course I’ve had to revise it now and again – the store re-configures its layout or what we buy changes. Still, it saves me time at home because it jogs my memory, and it saves me time at the store because I only make one swoop through the building – no more running back and forth fetching things I had put further down the list and didn’t notice.

Think about the meals you will cook this week. I usually plan mine around the proteins – what I have in the freezer, what is an extra good deal at the market, or what I got marked down at Sam’s Club. If chuck roast is BOGO (buy 1, get 1 free), we’ll be having it in some form. Even though I have been hungry for months for salmon, if it is $10/lb., we will not be having that, more’s the pity. I jot dinner menus on the back of my printed grocery list, so when I’m in the trenches at the store and they are out of some key ingredient or I score an unexpected deal, I can make adjustments intelligently.

Check recipes for ingredients you may need. I have wanted to make this dish for literally years, and somehow when I took chicken legs out of the freezer last night to thaw for tonight, somewhere in my tiny brain a voice said, “Remember that chicken thing in that book? You ought to find whatever it was and see if you can do that.” And look – I’m headed to the grocery store today, so I can get cilantro and olives and some couscous. I think today is finally the day for this darling!

What about your coupons? I often don’t have any. I used to clip and use them, but I buy less and less of the kinds of products typically covered by them, and I’ve gotten out of the habit. If you’ve got ‘em, though, organize and plan what you’ll use this week.

Now that you know what you plan to cook this week, quickly carry your grocery list around with you and check any odd items you aren’t sure you have. Even if you are sure, it’s the old “measure twice, cut once” thing – you won’t be sorry if you check, and you might be sorry if you don’t.

You probably already do the stuff we’ve already talked about, but do you do this? I am always so glad if I take time to:

Clean out the fridge – I want to get the cold food put away as quickly as possible, so it makes sense to make space in the fridge.

Make sure there is a landing zone – a clean counter – for the bags of groceries when I get home. Ask my kids: few things irritate me more than coming home from the store to find peanut butter and jelly smeared all over the island or stuff scattered across it when my arms are full of sacks.

Make sure there is a clear path to the landing zone:

Make sure there is room in the vehicle. Those are a pile of apparently-clean towels. How did they get there? I have no idea. I think they belong to us – do they? This is what happens when your kids grow up and you lose control of life generally.

We’re talking about the variety of kids that come in small sizes and are joined to you like an appendage and so accompany you to the grocery store, not to helpfully unload the cart and load the bags into the car and carry them into the house, but the kind who might tear up and down the aisles if you didn’t proactively train them to sit quietly in the front of the cart or walk beside you holding onto the cart with at least one hand at all times. If you’ve got those kinds of kids, they merit consideration if your shopping trip is to be pleasant and productive. Do be training them in civilized behavior, of course, but also try to have them fed, watered, and rested before you go trundling out. It makes the training so much easier, doesn’t it?

So, to review, it’s:

That’s not so hard, and look at you looking so organized!