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I walked into my grocery store this week and the staff were busy changing shelves and reorganising the whole store!!  Nightmare.  Well, I am sure it is a nightmare for the staff – some actually look quite frazzled but to be honest it was more me I was thinking about!  I have a system for my grocery shopping and the girls and I have whittled my weekly shop down to about 20-25minutes (that’s in and out!) and now its all going to be messed up!!

My System

I have my grocery list typed up in a template following the layout of the store.  I use a Excel (spreadsheet) so each column becomes a shopping isle.  I initially used the signs at the top of each isle to help me work out my template but over the years I’ve personalised it by making special note of the place the items I regularly buy are within that isle.  It makes shopping very quick.

Change!

So in my effort to be flexible and work with change I didn’t spit the dummy and give up shopping for a few weeks …. But rather took Nomi and Daniel in there yesterday and wrote up a new list.  It is a bit pre-emptory actually as they haven’t finished but I need to do a big shop tomorrow so I needed some guidelines.  We walked each isle making notes as we went along.  I came home and typed up a new template.

Shopping

The other part of my system is divide and conquer!  Once I’ve written my shopping list (filled in the template) I tear up my shopping list, column by column (or shop isle by isle) and give my daughters the isles where they can make good decisions (Jess can do the whole shop, Nomi is in training) and keep several isles for myself. They each take a shopping trolley, their list and off they go.  When I take both girls this means we each walk only a 1/3 of the shop – which means we can be done in 20 minutes!  I go early in the morning (6.00ish) before the crowds and we get through the checkout real quick.