Quarterly Shopping, Part Two

Ok, I'm back! I've been really busy the past week. We've been doing some much needed home projects, and rearranging furniture. When we weren't working on those, I was busy planning out the shopping trip. A lot of work goes into it, but I definitely think the pay off of not having to do it again for a while is worth it. This post will hopefully go a bit more into the how-to of our shopping.

First, Kim and Amanda are given a deadline for getting their requests in. I try to give them a month's notice, and then lots of reminders as the deadline approaches. For my own sanity, I give them a deadline that falls 3-4 days before I actually want the lists... everyone stays a lot happier that way. Oh, and they aren't required to list household/toiletry-type items that they need, their list is just for snacky food/drink type things. While they are working on that, I gather up all the notes that we have kept over the past three months of extras that we need. For example, this month we are getting a new case of mason jars, a moleskine notebook for Kim, a meat hammer/tenderizer, and a new potato scrubber. Those extra things that are either one time purchases, or only very, very occasionally need replacing.

Next, I sit down with my master shopping checklist. I know how many of each thing I need to have on hand for a three month period, so as I go through the house, I know I need to have *at least* that many on hand. For example, I know I need to have 6 of our handsoaps for a three month period. I currently have 3. So when I sit down with my final shopping list, I will make a note that I need to get at least 3 more. However, and I will go into this more later, I also follow the guidelines of stockpiling. So while I know I need a minimum of three, I also set a dollar limit on how much I can spend to make it all fit within my budget. I keep track of how much things actually cost (hand soap is $2.49/bottle at Target) and will set that amount, times however many I *need* to get, as the cost in my final shopping list. So my budget for the soap will be $7.50. And here is where stockpiling comes in. If I can find a coupon for the soap, or if Target is running a sale on it, then I get as many *over* three as I can still fit in the assigned budget for that item. Last time, this particular soap was on sale so I ended up getting two extra, which reduced the amount I need to buy this time, which definitely saves money, in case the soap isn't on sale this time.

Now, taking a moment to side note. You may have noticed a few glaringly obvious things missing from my master checklist. Items such as: toilet paper, laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, dish soap, and tea/coffee/cocoa. Also: fabric softener/dryer sheets, other paper goods (such as paper towels), household cleaners, and maybe some other things. Well, we don't buy anything from that second set because we don't use them at all. The items in the first set we do use, but I purchase all of those things online, in *very* large bulk orders, and most of them on a rotating schedule, so that I am not hit with needing to make that big investment very often.

Next up on the list making, I start figuring out what food items we will need. I look first at our meal plan for the quarter. Luckily, (because it isn't a task I particularly love) our meal plan is already laid out for the year. I put them together a year at a time, so I only need to refine it when I'm looking ahead to each quarter. I take the time at this point to go through and make note of any trips I know we will be taking, or if I know of a specific event we have going on that will affect the plan and adjust to remove or change those meals. The result is a pretty accurate look at what we will be eating for the next three months. Here you can see a sample week in our plan. (It actually looks a lot neater than that in my real spreadsheet, but oh well.) You may have noticed the shopping list column. That is SO very handy for me. I have a tendency to forget the most obvious aspects of meal planning - like the time it totally didn't register that we would need hamburger buns to go with our *hamburger* dinner. Yeah. In that column, I list every single possible ingredient I might need, including pantry staples like salt and pepper and flour.

Then I turn to my shopping list and itemize everything that appears in each week's grocery list. It gets very long (obviously). I don't have any sample documents from this stage because I do not save them in this state. I then do a sort so all same items are listed together (i.e. 20 rows of flour). I figure out how many times something has been listed, and then put the number in column b, next to the first time that item is mentioned, and then I delete the other 19 rows of flour. Unfortunately, I don't have a sample of it in this form either. But finally, I figure out just how much *actual quantity* of each item I'm going to need. Just because flour appeared 20 times, doesn't mean I need 20 *bags* of flour, kwim? So once I figure out how much I need, the final grocery list starts taking shape. Finally, following the guidelines for stockpiling mentioned above, I take note of how many of these things I already have in the house and then mark them off, or alter amounts accordingly. Oh, also at this stage, I fold in any requests from Kim and Amanda, anything extra I want, and any extras I think we may need. Once the final edit of this list is done, I put together the final shopping list.

The final list includes EVERYTHING we will definitely be buying. The amounts that appear next to most of the items indicate the minimum amount I must get. The prices in the last column indicate the maximum amount I have to spend. If, because of sales or coupons, I can get more than the minimum for no more than the maximum, we have had a very successful stockpiling trip. You can see the stores we shop at in the middle column. After everything is entered into the list, I sort it by store, and then, within each store group, manually sort it by aisle or by the way we move about the store. I don't *always* take time to do the last step, but it is so very helpful when I do, and makes for much less backtracking.

Ok, more, including pictures, coming soon.