Grocery Shopping & Inventory Control

Grocery Shopping Tips

Most of the time Grocery Shopping can be a daunting task filled with frustration. It seems like rush hour in there sometimes with shopping carts doubling as bumper cars. I really don’t like doing it myself so I like to streamline this process as much as possible to prevent me from having to spend 1 more second in the store than I have to. So if you can avoid it I would.

If you have Online Grocery Shopping in your neighborhood I would use it by all means as it can save you time, gas and money and is a relatively useful tool.
Here are a few of the stores I have ordered from Online recently:

Vons

Genuardis.com

Peapod


If you don’t feel comfortable with online grocery shopping or you cannot locate a vendor in your area that you can shop with than here are a few Grocery Shopping Tips that can help you streamline your visit to the market:

• Plan all your meals out in advanced and make a note of what ingredients you will need (I enjoy using AllRecipes.com, an online recipes site that helps me list all of the ingredients that are required for my meals for this week.) Great tool to use. This should save you a lot of time as you can print out your shopping list with 1 click
• Maintain a list of frequently made meals so that you will always have those ingredient readily available
• Double up on your favorite meals so that you can have some leftovers for another night or a lunch ( This will maximize your time spent in the kitchen) Take this into account when doing your shopping list
• Once you have a good shopping list in place do a quick layout of your grocery store. This way you can go through and grab everything you want from that section and move along from aisles 1-10 easily without forgetting anything in between
• After creating a good layout you can make some copies of it for future trips marking the aisles and sections that you will be using based off of your shopping list
• Keep a place at home preferably on the refrigerator door where other members of the house can add their own grocery shopping needs
• Use a coupon billfold to help you organize your coupons. Store the coupons by category for easy reference
• Use the billfold to store labels of your favorite items that you would normally forget
• You can also use the billfold to store your shopping list

Shopping

• Shop during periods of least activity.( Monday mornings are good because shipments usually arriving then and others are usually pretty sluggish on doing anything after a weekend, Mid-Mornings or Mid-Afternoons are also good times as well)
• Try to buy more in bulk being sure to check the prices per unit. Most of the time you will save money this way and it will save you on having to come back to the store sooner
• Take advantage of specials. Buy more during this time, especially if it is canned goods or other non-perishable items

At Home

• Establish a section for backup items such as a pantry area or kitchen closet
• When Freezing or hand wrapping always label everything
• Re-wrap all meats in appropriate portions
• Keep a backup supply of all items that way when you run out you will have a backup. When you reach that backup you can now add that item to your shopping list
• Teach other household members to be diligent about adding to the shopping list when you are low on an item not out

Keep it Clean

Genevieve