Grocery shopping
How do you usually handle the grocery shopping? Once a week or every two weeks? Do you shop on the same days? What is your grocery store of choice? Do you make a list or use coupons? What are your grocery shopping habits?
I personally hate grocery shopping! We dislike it so much, we usually make 2 or 3 trips to the store every week. We don't often just do a big shop that will hold us over for a couple of weeks...we would have to go back for milk and bread anyway, so we usually just "run in" to grab a few items a few times each week. This way we can usually breeze through the 12 items or less checkout lanes! Meijer and Kroger are the WORST for the checkout lines! Kroger has good deals, but we never go unless we can use the u-scan. And what is with Meijer getting rid of cashiers and replacing them with unlimited # of item self checkout lanes? I can't stand those things, but they seriously have like 2 cashiers open anymore. Grocery shopping is the worst! I hardly ever have a complete grocery list, and I can't seem to get into a good routine of clipping coupons! I pull them out of the paper every Sunday, but never take the time to use them. What are your ideas? I have to get into a better grocery shopping groove?
groceries
Well I shop oncec a month on a 150.00 budget and then buy extra items till then like bread, milk and stuff.
grocery shopping
We go shopping once a week. The day varies it depends on what we have going on. I use to go after work on Friday before we got home but its getting kinda hard with a 4 year that wants to walk through the store and just my pregnant self. We have been going either on Saturday or Sunday. We normally go to either Meijer or Krogers. I like meijers produce better then Krogers but I like Krogers meat. I would go to both places but hubby complains. Actually I realy like the u scans. Its easier for us. I scan and hubby bags. Its easier for me too. With this big belly its hard in the regular check out lanes to get around the cart to get stuff out but with the u scans there is more room to move. I do cut coupons and I do make a list but 9 times out of 10 I forget my list and coupons. haha. I actually dont mind grocery shopping. I do go to walmart if i only need to get a couple items, but normally not for my weekly shopping trip. Every week I spend about $100 a store. It never fail. Sometimes I swear I only have a couple bags and still spend that much.
Groceries
Well, I usually do Kroger on Thursdays when their new sales start, plus they will usually keep any sale items overstocked from the previous week on sale Thursdays, too. Kroger and Meijer both do double coupons up to $.50, which I LOVE! I rarely go to Meijer because it's just too big for my liking and their clearance or markdown items are comparable to Wal-Mart(they will only mark down like 15%). In fact, I've gone to Meijer and looked at their clearance foods and I've seen cereals that are on sale that week for less than they are charging for the exact same "clearance" boxes. I only go to Aldi about once a month for select items. Martin's is having some really good sales this week that correspond with quite a few of my coupons, so I plan on picking up a couple of things there(which I never do). Aside from that, the remainder(especially health and beauty items) I purchase from CVS or Walgreens. I may stop at quite a few places but my bargain shopping and coupon are certainly worth it. I get around 15-20% of our groceries for free or close to it.
Coupon clipping
As for your coupon clipping dilemma, I don't know exactly how your day flows, but I can't clip coupons with our one year old around. What I do is, sometimes when my one year old is napping I'll ask my four year old to help me clip coupons. I'll start clipping some to start for her and then she cut the rest of the way, or just give her a few pages of coupons that I don't want and tell her to cut them. She loves using scissors, and I've trained her to bargain shop, so it's fun. Yesterday we were at Kroger and we had a coupon for fruit snacks that was about to expire but they didn't have them on sale so I told her to put the coupon on the shelf for someone else to use if they wanted to. She said, "I know mama, we won't get them because: 1. They're not on sale. 2. They're too expensive. 3. We'll let someone with too much money to spend use the coupon." I had to laugh when she said that. Anyway, if I don't get her to help me with the coupons, I'll clip them after the kids go to bed while I'm watching tv or something. The key is to remembering what coupons you have while you either look at the ads or while shopping.