Welcome to another edition of Three Things Thursday. This week, three things that I do to prepare to go grocery shopping. It’s actually something I’m doing later today!
Three Things I Do When Preparing to Go Grocery Shopping
1) Meal Plan. I usually plan a week to a week and a half ahead. While I use it as a guide, I’m not afraid to shake things up and change the plan at the last minute, switching out the main dish, a side dish or an entire meal if I don’t have enough to make what I had planned to make. I plan by seeing what I already have in my cabinets (i.e. I have no need to buy pasta that week if I already have plenty in the cabinet, unless of course I can score it free or close to free), freezer, and fridge. I try to use up everything that I already have before planning to purchase anything new.
2) Organize my coupons. If you read my articles in the Daily Journal, you saw my coveted coupon binder. It’s an old one I found in my garage, filled with baseball card holder pages (graciously given to me by the King once he realized the coupons in them now are worth more than the cards that once occupied the slots), organized by aisle at the grocery store. I do a lot of shopping at Meijer so mine is set up to easily cruise through Meijer aisle by aisle. I can see both the front and back of the coupons with the pages. I’ll have to do another Three Things Post where I talk about the different sites/places where I collect coupons and where I go to check out coupon match ups. Maybe next week!
3) Make my list. I make a list with a couple of columns. One column is my Aldi column because there are staples that I get there every week (eggs, milk, fresh and frozen veggies) and the other column is the store of the week where I know I’ll score the best deals with my coupons. Sometimes it’s Walmart, sometimes Target, sometimes Meijer and occasionally it will be two. I like to put an a * next to the items that I know I have a coupon for/are on sale so that I don’t forget to get it out of the binder. It’s best if I keep a running list all week long and leave it on my kitchen counter so when something comes to me, I can write it down easily.
What about you? What are three things you do when preparing to grocery shop?
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