Grocery shopping is a chore. Once upon a time, people (mostly moms) had time to plan a week of meals, went to one store, and bought everything they needed to cook and everything their household needed for that week.  It could be a myth, handed down as tales of ‘kids that listen’ are.  Once upon a different time, people stopped on their way home from work and planned an evening meal around what was in-season and fresh at the market.

I’ve never met a household that did either of those things day in and day out. There are always days where everyone gets home, and we’re too exhausted to cook. Or too lazy, or just not hungry because we might have stopped at Sonic and gotten a cherry lime-aid and some cheezy tots.  I’m mostly lazy, and have a freezer full of stuff, which I throw at my husband and say , “Grill this”.

A long time ago, I split up my grocery shopping from my ‘other’ shopping. Other shopping is anything not food–toilet paper, paper towels, dish soap, laundry detergent.  Most of why I did this was specifically Randalls-related (and we’ll dissect the oddity that is Randalls in another post, including their missing apostrophe that should really be there).  In general, I buy groceries on Wednesday, with stops during the week for milk and bread, and ingredients for any new things I found out about and want to try. Thank you Facebook, for letting me know about bacon pancake sticks.

So my Grocery Theory point here is, think about why you buy what you do where you do. If you’re doing one big shop per week, is it because you think you’re getting the best price for everything, or because you can’t see a way to schedule any other stops? If you could do one stop to stock up the freezer with cheap pork shoulder, could you fit that trip in, and have a place to store it?