My husband says "Going Grocery Shopping is no big deal", shocking we differ...

On my way home from Costco, I was wondering why my husband always thinks grocery shopping is no big deal?  I was in strategic planning mode, my brain trying to figure out how many trips up the flight of stairs it would take to get everything into the Condo.  Three trips with rather large heavy boxes, all filled to capacity was the final tally.

I guess for him and most other husbands (men), it isn't a big deal.  Most of the men I see at the store are buying milk,diapers or have some cut of meat in their hands.  Most don't even have a cart. They can carry what they came to pick up in their arms, or if it's a big list, a basket.

Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate when my husband calls on his way home and asks if there is anything I need him to pick up.  I also appreciate all the cooking, well I should say, smoking, BBQ and grilling he does, it is yummy.  This isn't to bash my husband or men in general, it is just a realization of one more way in which we think differently.

Boy, do we think differently.

My mother trained me at a young age on how to create a shopping list and go shopping.  If I had planned right, I went only once a week, in order to curb spending, create a menu from the sales and stock the pantry with sale items, so that I could shop my pantry, instead of having to run to the store every other day. This last one is a challenge now that I am a Condo dweller.  In my previous home, I had an upstairs pantry, lots of kitchen cabinets and a downstairs food storage room.  If you ran out of flour making cookies all you had to do was go downstairs and get another bag, which I had purchased on sale, with a coupon.  In fact, about a year before we moved I started to use everything in the two freezers, and all the pantries. I started only buying things as we ran out. (Against my nature, by the way.)  It took all that time to empty the cupboards, okay they weren't empty. However, they were bare by my standards.

Even that taught me where I was buying a little to much and where I wasn't buying nearly enough to last a whole year. Feeding a family takes a lot of planning. Feeding them on a budget takes strategy too.

So by the time I and many other women I know get to the store we have already done a lot of preparation.  We have:

1. Gone through the cupboards, pantry, freezer and refrigerator to make a list of things we need to buy or which supplies are getting low.
2. We usually have read the sale adds of at least two different stores, comparing prices and seeing what is on sale.
3. We have made a list of recipes or actually done a complete menu for the week, two weeks or month depending on our own preferences.  So that we can make sure that we have all of the ingredients available to make the meals that we are planning on cooking.  Most of us don't have every spice on hand for every recipe.  I use an  phone app called Outofmilk. It organizes my shopping list into categories with quantities and makes shopping easier and quicker.
4. Now that we have a list we see if there are any coupons for any of the items we are actually buying. In addition, I have been using a little app on my phone called Ibotta, my referral code is fxbbuhn, if you want to sign up, it's free.  I have been using it for 3 months and have $21.50 in rebates(coupons) that I used without buying anything different than what I was already buying, like lettuce, tomatoes, bread, olives etc. The best part is that you can save it up and put it on a cash gift card. I am using mine for Christmas.
5. Then we decide where we are going. Now, most of us have regular things that we buy at a big box store like Costco, because it is better quality for the price than the sales.  However, this stuff comes in bulk, so you better be able to store it.  Then we usually decide that this store has more of what I want on sale than that one.  I'll go there first, and if there is a large difference in price on the other things I may go to a second store, to pick up those items. However, most stores today will price match if you ask the cashier, you just need to know the price of the EXACT same thing.
6. Now we get to actually go shopping with a cart, the biggest one they have.
7. Then we get to come home and unload the car. This is where I really miss my kids being home. Although, hauling everything up stairs is good for me, right?
8. All the frozen stuff goes in the freezer first.
9. Next we get to clean out the refrigerator so that all the new stuff will fit in it and all the "what is that growing in that container?", stuff is tossed out.  And because we have everything out of the fridge, we actually clean it.
10. After that we reorganize the pantry and kitchen cupboards to put all the rest of the haul away.
11. Finally, after I recoup a little from hiking up the stairs numerous times, this is where I use my phone to take pictures of my receipts for my Ibotta app and scan any UPC symbols required.

By the time that I have gotten to this point I have touched every item purchased at least 4 times. More depending on where you shop and if you have help at home to put things away.

1. From the Store shelf and into your shopping cart.
2. Out of the cart onto the conveyor belt at checkout.
3. Off the belt into a sack, if you are shopping at a Winco or Food4Less type store, where you bag it yourself.
4. From the shopping cart into the car.
5. From the Car into the house or in my case, up the stairs into the condo.
6. Out of the bags and into the fridge, freezer, cupboard or pantry.

If you buy one 50lb bag of dog food you have done 6 reps of 50 pound lifts. I'm impressed.  

Now, if my husband for example were to take on the shopping.  He would go to the store, buy stuff he needs to make a few things that sound good, all chosen while in the store. Then go home and when he didn't have everything he needed to make the next thing, he would just run down to the store and buy it plus a couple of other things that looked good to him at the time, and a snack, he needs a snack because dinner isn't ready yet. 

From his perspective, I guess shopping is "No Big Deal"  but his way can be very, very expensive. The average trip to the grocery store is a minimum of $35 dollars. If you go to the store just 1 extra time a week to pick something up that is approximately $1,820 a year you will probably spend. That is a car or a vacation.  Impulse buys are the culprit.  No plan = $$$$$ out of pocket.  We all are guilty of the impulse buy.  However by going to the store less often and sticking to a list it becomes ineffectual to overall spending.

The funny thing is that my husband will spend 9 - 12 hours smoking dinner, but thinks spending 45 minutes actually shopping for groceries is too much, "Just pick me up in the magazine isle when your finished." 

It's okay that I don't want to slow cook a pork butt roast in a smoker for 9 hours, checking the temperature, moisture, smoke etc every hour or so and it's okay that he doesn't like or want to actually do the grocery shopping.  We are different and that is good.  We can compliment each other that way. He is the meat man and I am the house manager. He makes a mess and I clean it up.

Just like everything else in life it comes down to PERSPECTIVE and ours are very different on grocery shopping, he is spontaneous and laissez-faire.  While I am strategically planning a successful mission, like Glenn on "The Walking Dead", for the survival of our family.