During this past decade or so of raising a family, I’ve learned
a lot about shopping for food.
During this past decade or so of raising a family, I’ve learned a lot about shopping for food. I learned that no matter how many boxes of macaroni and cheese you buy, you will always be out by the end of the week. I learned that you can’t pass off oleomargarine as real butter so don’t bother trying. And I learned that any flavor called “Passion Fruit Kiwi” means the same thing as “orange juice” but is twice as expensive.
But one of the most bizarre things I’ve learned is that you can go along for months, even years, as a once-a-week food shopper, making lists, sticking to grocery shopping schedules, creating weekly dinner menus and so on and so on. Then all of a sudden, just when you’re thinking about how efficient and well organized you are, whamo! Your entire food shopping system is reduced to complete and utter chaos. And all because you foolishly went to the store “just to pick one thing up.”
Let me explain.
Like most big mistakes in life, everything starts out innocently enough. For instance, one day you gaze into the fridge and realize you’re out of milk. So you take a quick trip to the grocery store to get a gallon of milk and, hey while you’re there, you grab a frozen pizza. (For those of you affiliated with children’s social services, I mean a “free range chicken.”)
And then you think all is well and good. But, trust me, it’s not.
Because, you see, the next day you’ll find that you’re well stocked with milk and, er, chicken, but are completely out of breakfast food. So you’ll go back to the store for just a box of cereal. And then back again later that day for some laundry detergent and then a bag of cat food.
And so it begins. Round and round until you, a previously ultra-organized shopper, find yourself going to the store a bazillion times a week, buying your entire week’s worth of groceries in increments of twos and threes because now you’re no longer out of everything at once. Before you know it, you are trapped in a Vicious Grocery Shopping Cycle From Hell From Which There is No Escape!
Oh all right, so maybe this is a bit over dramatic. But still.
And I know that most of you are probably sitting there rolling your eyes thinking it can’t happen to you, but just take a look at the confused and helpless expressions on the people’s faces in the express line.
Most of these people used to be organized, once-a-week shoppers too, until the day they innocently went on a quick trip to the store to – ha, ha – “just pick one thing up.”
Of course it would be stretching it to say that every person who buys a few items here and there is trapped in some sort of grocery shopping nightmare. There are some things you can pick up that won’t throw your shopping schedule out of whack. Batteries are one. And gum. And pantyhose are safe for the most part.
But, hey, being a daily shopper isn’t all bad. The good news is that you’ll make lots of really, really polite new friends, all of whom are eager to hear about how you’re doing today.
The other good news is that, even if you do nothing at all, you’ll be back on schedule sooner or later. Because, according to the highly complex, unscientific formula that I call the Farmer Mathematical Theory of Grocery Shopping, after about 87 trazillion trips to the store for one thing you’ll eventually work your way around to being out of everything at the same time and find yourself back on a once-a-week shopping schedule.
And you’ll be an Officially Organized Food Shopper again.
Like I will be again after about 16 trazillion more trips.
Need anything?
