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Grocery Shopping At Your House. Team Effort? Or Solo Mission?

Grocery Shopping At Your House. Team Effort? Or Solo Mission?
Carly Jacobs

In the Smaggle haus, grocery shopping is a contentious issue. Ben would be quite happy to live off gluten free ham and cheese toasties for the rest of his life but I have a penchant for perishables like fruit and vegetables so I have to shop on a more regular basis. This means that I shop almost every day and he’ll join me maybe twice a week. I don’t trust him to do a big shop alone. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not stupid. He can read a detailed list and buy the corresponding items. However if my preferred item isn’t available, he can get pretty creative with an alternative item. We had a very interesting cheese incident a few weeks ago. It was a bit of a game changer really.

Of course, I love having him come with me because it’s so much easier if he’s there to help drag the groceries home… and that’s pretty much where the love ends. Grocery shopping for him is a rather torturous event and he wants to get it done as fast as humanly possible. It’s not exactly a pleasant experience for me either but I like to take my time and select perfect apples, read the labels on all the muesli bar boxes, compare prices and really put a lot of thought into whether I want grapefuit or mint flavoured shampoo this month. It’s relaxing for me. Ben sees grocery shopping as a sport and wants to run around with the trolley pelting items into it at break neck speed and if he can get there and back in 20 minutes he’s visibly giddy.

My mother has always preferred to shop alone. If she shops with me she ends up with an extra $60 worth of beauty products in with her groceries. If she shops with my father he wanders off with the trolley and fills it with weird shit like jam rolls and solar powered outdoor patio lights.

I have friends, a married couple who always shop together and they love it. They plan their weekly menus and wander around the supermarket in a blissful daze. They even have this game where they make a mystery meal for each other once a week and part of the game is to sneak the ingredients into the trolley. I know, puke right?

I also have a friend who’s husband does all of the shopping. All of it. She’ll be eating some kind of weird crackers and I’ll ask where she got them and she’ll be like ‘I dunno. My husband does all the shopping.’ Mental.

What about you? What’s your family shopping style? Team effort? Solo voyage? A bit of both? Also who’s ‘in charge’ of the shopping?

Shopping cart image from Jennifer Squires

15 Comments

  1. auroralapetite 11 years ago

    We have a mixture of shopping tendencies. We always meal plan together, and then depending on schedules, I either do the main grocery shop or we’ll do it together. Then if we need anything extra, I always send him out to pick it up.

  2. Nessbow 11 years ago

    My boyfriend and I shop together, but I’m in the driver’s seat. When we first started living together, I let him take charge on one shopping trip and I just couldn’t hack it. I am very methodical with the shopping. I create a detailed list based on a meal plan for the week, I navigate the aisles in a particular order and I don’t like to faff about. His shopping method is of the ‘grab things that look good, regardless of whether they actually go together to create a meal’ persuasion. After an hour of racing back and forth across the supermarket, I was so frustrated that I chucked a tanti. Now, I’m in charge of shopping, but we both help to plan the meals for the week, and he regularly talks me into buying odd treats.

  3. jicyjac 11 years ago

    You taste your shampoo?

    Unfortunately shopping is my job, I used to quite like grocery shopping before I had kids – wandering around checking out ingredients and planning meals, but now feeding a household of 6 I have too much stuff to get and I resent the time it takes. I do a huge online supermarket shop about every 3 weeks, I have a big walk in pantry, so I really stock up. Then I go to the local grocers 2 or 3 times a week for fruit and veg (we consume about 4kg of apples each week here!!!) and the butchers every couple of weeks to load up the freezer.

  4. dee 11 years ago

    I loathe grocery shopping with every fibre of my being. The noise, the muzak, the screaming children, people backing into me while on their mobiles, way too many choices, the queues. Urghhh.
    Thank heavens for online grocery shopping!! I am a recent convert, and I may never go near a supermarket again. I maximize the fun by always doing it in my jammies, with a cup of tea and some incense or oils burning nearby. Sure, it does require some organizational skills (I shop once a fortnight) and I dont get to squeeze the fruit, but I can live with that.
    Happy shopper!!!!

  5. jasmine 11 years ago

    I share-house with a 6 year old boy, and used to think it was easier to shop without him … until I had this realisation that when he’s not with me, I miss him, and tend to want to do nice things and spoil him – so I’ll throw in a nifty new toy, maybe a new book, some textas, fancy yogurt etc. Whereas if I shop with him, he irritates me with all his demands for this and that, and I end up cracking down on him and letting him choose ‘JUST ONE THING’. In short; if I shop with him, it’s irritating and leaves me in a bad mood, but I’ll actually spend less as I try to get in and out of there ASAP. Without him, I take my time and feel peaceful … and spend way more money.

  6. Nicole 11 years ago

    I do the grocery shopping in my house because I’m the same as you; I have preferred items I like to get and if they aren’t there, hubby gets creative. But I get really agro (like fuming) when it comes times to get all that shit into the car and then into our house. “Why do I have to do it ALL THE TME??” And I like to throw in a sneaky block of chocolate or a nice loaf of sourdough whereas hubby gets what is needed only.

  7. Bek 11 years ago

    When my husband does the shopping he comes home with 6 items: cheddar cheese, orange juice, marinated pitted olives, salami, beetroot dip and fill pickles. Because I don’t like the idea of shrivelling up into human jerky from all the salt, I need to supplement by doing the shopping most of the time. I do have this fantastically cheap fruit and veg shop nearby and I have figured out I can fruit and veg us up for the entire week for under 30 bucks. As a result, it has become a little game for me and I run around the store calculating in my head. I also have a hatred of wasting food, so I plan our meals–ain’t nothing can make me feel like I’ve failed at the game more than a soggy carrot or brown broccoli languishing in the veggie keeper by the end of the week!

  8. Alex 11 years ago

    The man of my house also sees grocery shopping as some kind of marathon effort and I never understand how he has made it to 32 years old without realising that if he spent 15 extra minutes doing the shopping, we’d have everything and be organised, rather than needing to do the mercy run to the corner store because he forgot the milk. Our biggest problem is the special buys section of Aldi. The man who literally runs through the aisles, stops at the special buys and inspects every item, putting forth a convincing argument as to why we need to purchase whatever has taken his fancy.

  9. Magatha May 11 years ago

    I like to have a system when I shop. If you don’t fit into the system then I rather you didn’t come shopping with me. I hate having to go back and forth so I always take it aisle by aisle, skipping the ones that I don’t need like the baby aisles and the freezer section. I’m housesharing so space is at a premium in our fridge – I only buy what I know I’ll eat during the week. And I have my meals down to what I know I eat – yogurt and muesli for breakfast, soup for lunch and a picnic plate for dinner. I like routine and it makes it so much easier to shop when I know what I’ll be eating.

  10. Carla 11 years ago

    Ugh, I hate grocery shopping but I hate shopping with my boyfriend even more! I am like Ben, I like to get in and out as fast as possible – can’t stand the rude aisle-blockers, screaming children and painfully slow staff! Also the choice makes me a bit dizzy. That said, I plan well and only deliberate over prices or nutrition labels on things I don’t buy regularly. Fortunately I’m a creature of habit and the only free choice I allow is for things like fruit and vegetables where availability and quality is variable.

    The boyfriend can shop and does on occasion, it’s just that he’s really bad at doing it when it needs to be done. He’s also a sucker for ‘twofers’ and brings home too many dessert foods (which is fine for a guy with the fastest metabolism in the world; his girlfriend? not so much).

  11. Harlow 11 years ago

    I have a love hate relationship with grocery shopping. I do the shopping with my partner because I need him there for the moral support and because I am really bad at maths. I make the list, I plan the meals for the week and then I divide the list and he gathers his half. We buy all of our fresh fruit/veg at the local green grocer because their stuff is half the cost of the garbage that the “Fresh Food People” put forward and, their fruit and veg isn’t mouldy and wormy on the inside. Bonus! The staff there are also really lovely, whereas the staff at Woolworths are some of the most appaullingly behaved people I have had the misery to encounter…the checkout staff are just SO rude. Infact, I used to really love grocery shopping but too many unpleasant staff members at Woolworths have left me a little traumatized so I will never shop there alone again!

  12. RubySlypprz 11 years ago

    I’m with Jicyjac: stock up and save time, energy, & precious sanity. A well-ordered pantry feels luxurious, brimming with potential feasts-in-the-making. But occasionally there’s that “just need one item” trip that turns into the motherload of junk food and impulse splurges, followed by the guilt and the penance of homemade chocolate banana cake.

  13. Sugandha 11 years ago

    Once a week, usually on the weekend – both the husband and I go together to grocery shop. I usually have some sort of meal plan so base a list on that and he;s really there because he never remembers what he wants until he gets to the shop. I’m like you, I take my time while he speeds through it but somehow it balances. He does a mid-week shop for fresh meat/fish for whatever we’ve planned for the later part of the week, dog food (because we always seem to run out) and anything else we may have missed (oh and a bottle of red wine for the weekend when I was drinking :P)

  14. JessB 11 years ago

    Forgot to comment on this at the time, but I just wanted to say that I shop with my Dad, and have done for a couple of years, since he and my mum broke up. We both shop at the same time, and at the same place, so as well as helping him out, it just made sense.

    Now, it’s completely lovely and a brilliant time for the two of us to catch up. I adore spending the time just me and my Dad, and we talk about food and what we’re going to make, and chat with all of our friends – the bakers, the fishmonger (who Dad knows from when they were in short pants together), the chicken lady and the brothers who work there, George the butcher, the deli girls and Sue at the fruit and veg place. It’s great.

  15. Lucy Napthali 11 years ago

    I live in university housing, which comes with the ability to eat pre-prepared meals in our college’s dining hall, but more often than not, I end up cooking my own food. I generally food shop late at night, about an hour before closing, and generally with a herd of five of my friends. Once we get to the supermarket I split off either on my own, or with my friend Sam, she is the only one I can take with because I have the same approach as Ben: it’s a sport and quickest one wins. I have a list, I know what I want, and i want out of there. So I speedily zip around, grabbing everything I need within a block of five minutes, through the cash registers in about three minutes, and on the benches out the front ready to go for another fifteen minutes as I wait for the others to finish. Most of my friends are wanderers, never take a list and just mosey about until they spot something they want, which can take FOREVER, so Sam is generally the only one allowed with me as I shop, because she’s nice and quick. I’m even worse if we have to shop during the day and there’s people everywhere, makes me want to hit people. :/

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