grocery shopping

[mllesays]

Grocery shopping is the worst chore in the world for me.  How do you make yourselves do it?

It's not that I think I'm particularly bad at it — I definitely never buy enough produce, but it's always because I'm scared I won't eat it in time — but rather that I loathe it with a passion and would rather eat all the food in the house before I force myself out to buy new things.

Any tips, tricks, suggestions?

Comments

[lassarina]

I just make it a regular chore with a schedule, exactly like cleaning the litter box or doing laundry. It helps that I take my lunch to work every week as a matter of money-saving, so every week about the same time I need items to make lunch with. So every Saturday morning (I live in a VERY heavily Orthodox Jewish area, though I am not myself Jewish, and on Saturday 90% of the village is at temple and would never THINK of going to the store) I drag myself out of the apartment with my list.

On days when I am particularly "do not WANT" about it, I bribe myself with bagels (there's a Panera less than 2 minutes from my awesome grocery store) or some other kind of treat--but only after the shopping is done!

[mllesays]

These are good suggestions! Perhaps I do just need to schedule it firmly so there's no getting out of it.

Unfortunately I work on Sunday mornings, when the majority of my Latin@ neighborhood would be occupied at church. I should try to figure out another time when hardly anyone would be there.

[lassarina]

Friday evenings on the way home from work are often helpful. Failing that, if you're either not a party time type person or if your party time starts later than the average, 6pm-ish on Saturday used to work for me (granted, at that time I lived in a town that was half snooty yuppies and half pain-in-the-ass college kids, and I belonged to both groups at some point during my residence there). So for what that's worth :)

Another thing I do to keep myself from wasting food--and to make sure I shop regularly--is only buy enough food for the week. I keep some things in stock, like pasta and rice and a few cans of soup for emergencies, but my freezer is too small to store a lot of meat/veggies, so I tend to plan out the meals for each week and shop accordingly. (Side benefit: rarely looking at the fridge and going "er, I'm not sure what this science project started life as, but...")