This post is gonna be simply riveting. Thought I should warn you up front, now if you stick around to the very end and wonder why on earth you did, it’s your own fault.
We went grocery shopping today. We do this every 2 weeks (payday and all, you know). We have to go on quick runs several times during the 2 weeks to pick up a few groceries here and there (bread, milk, fruit, oh my word do we go through those things), but for the most part with as far away from a mega grocery store as we are if we don’t get it on payday, we do without. This is the big one. The doozy. The “must get my mind right before going, and plan meticulously what I’m getting” trip. Also, as you know, I take the kids with me shopping. It’s not like I would actually choose such a task, but it just works out that way. No sitter, too tired at night, too far from the store for the evening trips anyway, so I just go early in the day with all the kiddos while Matt’s at work most times.
This cell picture was of a day I went alone with all the kiddos and didn’t bring the stroller in, I remember regretting that.
This family shopping for 7 and (usually with at least 6, sometimes 7 depending on if Matt comes along) is a production.
We pick up the house so it’s easier (and much more pleasant) to walk in with all those bags of stuff, clean off counter tops to make room for all the groceries we’ll pile there, I plan our meals, I write our list, I feed the kids, we go early (less chance of fitsters), I take a stroller (I can keep Baby contained easier than those buggies he can manage to stand up in), I get one buggy for the food and have kids alternate pushing the baby or the buggy with me, we move quickly through the store – no dawdling, we pay, I grab an extra buggy before we get to the checkout (somehow all that food doesn’t fit back into one buggy and I usually need to load bags into a buggy before the one I’m currently using is unloaded), then I load up the van, we drive home, we unload the groceries, we put away groceries. By then I’m ready to crawl into a hole for the rest of the night. Unfortunately, the night must go on and I have to get my mind right again. It’s a good thing we only get paid every 2 weeks, I don’t know that I could stand it much more often than that.
I am amazed with as much as we spend at the grocery store and as much as we buy each time, that we are so bare by the time it’s payday again.
For instance here’s a before shot of our fridge (this was actually from a different shopping trip, somehow I let another payday go by before I got the after shot today). Woowee was it dirty. Yuck. Sorry, that’s just how it goes around here sometimes. Okay, more than sometimes.
But this time Matt went with us (sometimes I actually prefer to go without Matt, I don’t know, I’m just weird like that) and when he does I’m super grateful. It allows us to speed up some (we sometimes split up, though we can’t do that too much – we end up with too many of the same things!), it lessens the stress of the talky distracty whiny kids, and if the kids are falling apart by the time we get to the check out, one of us can take the kids to the van. Plus, it’s marvelous to have him help unload the groceries and put them away.
And here is a shot of our “after” fridge today.
Those juices were on sale for a dollar each today, I was beyond excited!!
I told you riveting. But I’ve had friends ask me before if I have 2 refrigerators or if the one fridge I have is giant, in order to store all that we buy. No, is the answer to both of those, though we do have an upright freezer. I just stack stuff, cram stuff, and get creative. Plus, the more you cook, the less room the stuff takes up (as opposed to lots of precooked, prepackaged foods). At the bottom left of that picture up there is our raw meat section. When we come home, that’s where it goes until I get it cooked. Once it gets cooked in the first couple of days then we wipe it out and stack our bread in there. That makes the bread last longer and uses the space we have wisely.
That’s it. That’s all I came here to tell you. It was just a show and tell, really. Nothing deep or spiritual or even ranty or educational. Just a hey, we shop for 7 people with a normal minivan (with all 7 of us in it too) and we fit all our food into our fridge by being crazy and stacking stuff like a Dr. Seuss city. Oh, and I’m beginning to see that most of my pictures could be in their own I-Spy books. Ridiculous, really.
You’re so glad you stuck around for this whole post, right? So, how do you shop and where does it all go?
