Single Blonde Girl vs. Grocery Shopping

Being single for the first time in almost 13 years or so has it's many perks and few challenges.  One such challenge has been retraining myself on grocery shopping.  Anyone who has always shopped for one person is probably thinking 'oh that's easy'.  For me it is getting easier for sure.  I rarely eat out, I am such a spend thrift that I find it much cheaper to make my own meals and besides that I just enjoy cooking.  So when I am shopping it is for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I used to do what I call Armageddon grocery shopping.  Every two weeks on payday I'd go and stock up on everything in the world that the household may possibly need for those two weeks.  Why every 2 weeks?  Payday always fell every two weeks.  I was hauling in enough food to fill the pantry, cupboards, refrigerator, freezer and deep freezer, as well as other necessities such as cleaning supplies and personal hygiene.  When I was with my ex-husband and his younger teenaged brother lived with us the bulk discount stores were definitely my friend, it is truly amazing how much food 2 young men can pack away.  And when I was in my second domestic living family situation where there were two young children again I was amazed at how much food 2 little girls can pack away!  And let us not forget toilet paper.  What in the world do they do with the toilet paper?

One of the downfalls of continuing to bulk shop in my current living situation is that my apartment is not located super close to the parking lot.  So making 13 trips with grocery bags to Narnia is not the funnest thing in the world to do.   After the first time I went and did my normal 2 week stock up trying to guess what I would need for only me and any possible visitors and I did those several trips back and forth from the parking lot to my apartment bringing everything in I knew that I had to figure out a better system.

After trial and error over the months I think I've got it down, finally!  I now know exactly how much food I consume on my own.  I've always taken a list when I grocery shop to streamline my process, and it's amazing that my list is so short now after being so used to shopping for so many people.  My biggest friend is the tiny version of the shopping cart that my preferred grocery store now has.  It's wonderful!  It has two tiny baskets and whatever fits in those tiny baskets ends up being one trip to the apartment from the parking lot.  I also have changed my routine of biweekly grocery shopping to now shopping once a week and get everything I need just for that week.

Now that I've gotten this down some hunk of an awesome man is probably going to fall into my lap, undoubtedly with 9 children and a younger brother and an uncle and 16 dogs that live with him, bringing me a whole new challenge of retraining my shopping habits.  But I'm always up for a good challenge. ;)

Much love!