My Monthly Mega Shopping Trip

Today begins my most favorite week of the month - shopping week!!!  I look forward to it like a kid waits for Christmas morning.  I obsess over menus and Pin ideas on my Pinterest boards all month long and then this is the week that I put the deep cleaning on hold and focus on what my family is going to eat for the next month.  The WHOLE month.  Breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks are planned and shopped for.  It takes some patience and a lot of planning but I found the effort to be so worth it.  Less trips to the grocery store means less money spent.  A month of planned, shopped for meals means lots of options and less "what's for dinner" stress at home.  A full pantry, until grocery day near again...which is wear we are until Friday this week... Now we play the game "What can we make with....?"

Here are a few points to note about G-Day:
1.  I go to three stores.  Aldi, Walmart, and Wegmans
2.  I go alone to Aldi and Walmart.  Wegmans is a family affair because we usually need two carts and I enjoy torturing my kids at least once monthly and this fulfills the quota.
3.  I use the Wegmans website and App on my phone to make a very specific, detailed grocery list.  If you create an account, you can make a grocery list right on their webpage and it will add up your total for you.  This is a HUGE help to me.  It allows me to stay on budget and make any changes that I need to in my meal plans before going to the store where last minute decisions can be stressful and backfire at the register.   Having this list helps me when I begin shopping at Aldi's and Walmart as well.  I will get into that in a bit.

First, let's talk about how the week of shopping goes.

Sunday - I make the last Weekly Meal Plan before grocery shopping.  This is the most difficult plan to make of the month because it usually requires some creativity with ingredients.  So far though, we have had plenty of food to last us.  To see how I do my Weekly Meal Plank click Here

Monday - Clean out the fridge day.  I pull out everything left over in the fridge and give the shelves, walls and drawers a good wipe down.  I toss anything expired and make note of what needs to be used up.

Tuesday - I finish/review my Monthly Master Menu List and add any ingredients I may need to the grocery list. 

Wednesday - I go to the bank and pull out the cash for my shopping days ahead.  We only use cash for purchases, which includes groceries.  This keeps us on budget and makes me second guess every item that goes into our cart.

Thursday- I head, alone, to Aldi and Walmart with my Wegmans list that I view on the app I have on my phone.  I get as many items there as I can, provided they are cheaper than the Wegmans price.  If I find something cheaper, I get it.  I know by getting it cheaper than what Wegmans has it listed for will reduce my shopping list and make some wiggle room for "fun" items like snacks or convenience foods that I normally wouldn't add to my list.  I check it off my Wegmans list right away in the store so I do not forget.  If I wait to do it at home I know the first chance I will have is after the groceries are put away and dinner is cleaned up.  By then I either will have forgotten what I got or I will just plain old forget to update the list. This shopping trip that I do is where I really think my "power" over my grocery budget comes into play.  I take the time to go to more than one store.  I believe it is more than worth it to have an extra $50 in the end.

Friday - Family Grocery Shopping Day!  My kids borderline dread this day, but my husband and I try to make it less of a drag by buying them each smoothies as we begin the trip. It also assures us a good 10 minutes of silence while we find, bag and weigh our produce.   Each time we start shopping we grab one cart and each time we have needed to get a second.  We just get that much stuff.  It is a whole months worth of food.  A months worth of cereal, tortilla chips, juice boxes, eggs, coffee, produce, meat, chicken stock, yogurts, bread...  you get the picture.  For this trip I actually print out the Wegmans shopping list.  I do this because it organizes everything by store sections and aisle with pictures.  Yes, pictures of the items!  This helps when you need Kid A to go grab something from the previous aisle and you don't want to take your two-cart parade back for it.  If given a picture, Kid A is more likely to bring back the correct item.  Or something very close to it.  Usually.

For our family I have found that planning and shopping the way I do saves us a lot of money and a lot of stress throughout the month.  Our grocery budget for the entire month for food, toiletries, household items and everything is $500.  I remember weeks in the past where I spend $300 in one week on food items that I thought we needed but never used.  Cash was flowing out, I was buying heaps of food and at the end of the month I couldn't recall what I actually spend it on.  I shop once a month, which means less trips out and less temptation to buy stuff we don't need.