The Lazy Genius Podcast - #126 The Lazy Genius Guide To Grocery Shopping

Episode Date: October 7, 2019

There are lots of ways to approach shopping for groceries from where you go to making a shopping list, and today I’m going to share my seven principles for buying groceries like a Lazy Genius. We can, in fact, Lazy Genius just about anything, including how, when, where, and even why you buy groceries. I think you’ll really be encouraged and motivated by the end of this episode. Stuff Mentioned My ebook The Swap is part of the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle Flash Sale that’s happening October 16-17. Sign up for The Lazy Genius VIP email list to get a reminder when the sale goes live. Does your meal plan have House Hunters syndrome? Maybe your grocery shopping style has it, too. Some more of my thoughts on grocery shopping can be found all over my website, including The Lazy Genius Shops at Costco, The Lazy Genius Shops at Aldi, and The Lazy Genius Shops at the Farmers’ Market. Do you have thoughts or opinions about grocery shopping? Share them with me over on Instagram. I’m @thelazygenius, and I’ll be LIVE on Thursday around noon EST to talk about groceries. I mention The Nester in this episode. She’s a delight and so is her annual Nest Fest that happens later this month.  Download a transcript of this episode. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We can, in fact, lazy genius just about anything, including how, when, where, and even why, mostly why, you buy groceries. I think you'll really be encouraged and motivated by the end of this episode. At least I hope so. First, I want to let you know that next week, the swap will be available for just a couple of days. It has been part of the Ultimate Bundles Homemaking Bundle for the last few months, and they're bringing back that bundle on October 16th and 17th, just those two days.

and that is the only way to get your hands on the swap for at least another month or two. If you are new around here, the swap is the lazy genius guide to decluttering for life. It is a downloadable, short, actionable ebook that will help you not just get your clutter under control, but help you establish easy, personal practices to mostly keep it that way. Nobody keeps clutter away forever. But with the swap, you will likely come closer than you have before. again, it's only available through the company Ultimate Bundles, and lucky for you, it is part of a bundle of literally hundreds of homemaking resources, ebooks, digital courses, pretty printables, all kinds of

stuff. If you were on my VIP mailing list, you'll get a direct link to that flash sale once it begins next week on the 16th. I will mention it in next week's episode, but in case you listen to that one, like a couple of days after it hits your phone, you might miss the sale. So if you want first word, be sure to join the VIP list. There's a link for that in the show notes. Okay, let's talk about how a grocery shop, like a lazy genius. I have seven shopping principles I want to share with you that will hopefully help make everything feel easier and more intentional in your shopping. Number one, name what matters. Now this might feel like a weird thing to do to begin, like when you're talking about grocery shopping, but I assure you it is not. The challenges with buying food are varied.

You want to save money. You want the experience of shopping to be good. You want convenience, organic options, an awesome selection, whatever. There's a thing I call House Hunters Syndrome. I will put a link in the show notes to a post I wrote a while back about how your meal plan has Househunter's syndrome and your shopping practices might too. You have likely seen the show on HGTV. Househunters follows a couple usually in their quest to find their perfect house. We all laugh because they want like five bedrooms, three bathrooms, an open concept floor plan, a two-car garage, a pool, a huge backyard, plenty of space for entertaining, always entertaining. They want the house in a perfect neighborhood, close enough to walk to a coffee shop with a big yard and a good school

district, but they have like $75. We all watch that show and we're like, you guys, you can't get everything. The same is true for so many things in our lives, including grocery shopping. You want to save money and stick to a budget, but you also want convenience foods. You want a lovely shopping experience and organic choices, but you want everything that you buy to be its absolute cheapest. You want everything to be in one store and all at the lowest price, but we cannot house hunters are grocery shopping. You have to name what matters in order to know where to shop and how you're going to do it. If sticking to a budget is the most important thing that matters, that will inform your shopping. If you really need options to get food on the table quickly because

you're like a working parent and you have literally half an hour from getting out of the car to sitting down at the table. A really frugal grocery budget is much harder to stick to. Convenience by nature, it costs more. You rarely can get both. So often our frustration is looking for both of those things to exist together and they just rarely do. The energy you spend, try to find a unicorn of a store that carries all the things for the cheapest, it takes more out of you, then you probably think. If saving money is not the thing that matters the most, but you're still going to five different stores over a couple of days to get the cheapest price on every single thing on your list, you will actually lose your mind. Because the price doesn't really matter as much anymore as your

time does, but you haven't said that out loud yet. You haven't accepted that convenience and going to just one or two stores is all you have time for, even if you have to pay 30 cents more per line than you do at that third store. So name what matters, whether it's cost, convenience, experience, organic options, efficiency, how much the shopping process fits into the rest of your life, like logistically, whether or not the store has really good curbside pickup, whatever it is. Name what matters. And you can't say all of them. Name the one main thing. And then that will help you decide everything else. Second principle. Choose what to accept. and what to change. We all have some kind of frustration around grocery shopping, whether it's

like all the running around, spending money on food that always seems to land in the trash, a certain store, like never seems to have stuff in stock, you know, any number of things. There's no shortage of things to find frustrating, but you don't have to keep living in that frustration. So either choose what frustrations to accept, namely the things that don't matter as much as you thought, be lazy about those things, or choose to change something, be a genius about something that matters to you. For the first few years of my marriage, we had very little money. Cause and I were both in college when we got married and didn't have jobs, but we still had bills. Even then, like his first and still his current job is being a school counselor, which doesn't

exactly pay well. And I had a part-time job at a church. So even when we were making money, it wasn't a lot. Saving money on food was a huge priority. I would spend a lot of extra time planning my shopping around store sales, eclipsed coupons. I'd meal plan around what coupons I had and what sales there were. And I would easily go to six different stores over the course of a week because I could. You know, I had the time and it also mattered. Now, when we started having kids and I was home with them, it was still easy to do those things for the most part because I needed things to kind of break up the day of being home,

you know, with diapers and babies who don't have. It was slightly annoying to go to all those stores, but it didn't really matter too much. well about a year ago I found myself dreading grocery shopping it was just the worst possible thing and I was surprised by that because I had never hated it before then I realized that what mattered had changed but I wasn't changing my practices to go along with it

I was just living in the frustration we didn't need we don't need to save as much money as we used to and now that I'm working, I don't have even close to the same amount of time to go to all those stores. So rather than staying in that frustration and letting it kind of eat my lunch, I decided to choose what to accept and what to change. I can accept being frustrated that this lime costs 30 cents more than the other one. And I can choose to change how often I shop. It's absolutely worth it to me to go to only one store for everything and pay a little more than to be endlessly

frustrated at all the time I was spending at different stores to save money that wasn't as important anymore, at least as important as my time. Sure, it is still a little frustrating to not spend the absolute least amount on every single item I can buy, but I'm choosing to accept that as part of the trade-off. I would much rather shop once and be done in my limited time than save $10 a week. So principle two, choose what to accept and what to change. And that is directly affected by the first principle of naming what matters. Number three, you can't have it all. You cannot have it all. This is a short and sweet and almost repetitive principle to naming what matters, but it is really important to say here after the first two principles, because you're going to want to rebel and you

want to have it all. We all feel it at some point, but you just can't. You can't have it all. When you feel yourself frustrated by your grocery shopping experience, remind yourself that you can't have it all and that's okay. You're not missing some magical piece of the puzzle that everyone else has. Even if you had more money to spend or you had more time to shop, you'd still find ways to be frustrated. We're human. Most of us in very westernized cultures and we're kind of taught to find fault in things. So we'll buy more stuff to make it better. There's always something to complain about. So the sooner we can all remember that we can't have it all, nor should we, in some respects, the more pleasant that grocery shopping experience will be. Just kind of accepted. You can't have it all.

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You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Number four. rethink your routine. Some of your frustrations with shopping, it could be that you've been doing it a certain way for so long that you've kind of forgotten that you can change it. That happens in my life all the time, y'all. I remember the first time the Nestor told me that I can move around my own furniture whenever I want. And I was like, I can. We forget that we're grownups and we can change things, even if they've been that way forever. So rethink your routine. Maybe you are ready to graduate to curbside pickup.

Maybe your morning shopping doesn't work anymore because you're working part-time in the mornings and you can't go really, but you're still trying to cram it in like super early before you go to work or something. Maybe you've always kept a list on the fridge of groceries to buy, but now you plan dinner from your office rather than at home and you need a digital list instead because you forget things.

Find your frustration. See if it's rooted in an old routine that is no longer serving you and rethink it so that it will. Five, create your best scenario. Okay, so this one is fun. If you could choose to grocery shop in the best way possible, what would that scenario be? Mine would be shopping one morning a week at two stores,

max, not getting mad about it, and then never going again until the next week. That's my ideal scenario. The fact that I didn't include anything about savings or what the food selection is, it hints at what matters to me. Back to that principle one. That is what is helpful about this practice of creating your best scenario. Convenience and efficiency, those are the name in the game for me.

With like a little bit of experience thrown in there, I don't really like to get angry about it about shopping. I don't want to be angry about anything, but I tend to get a little frustrated when the experience isn't great. Now, I have not yet graduated to curbside pickup because I am too much of a control freak and choosing my food, but really, like going in, getting all the stuff, not being mad about missing foods or unkind staff or like a poorly laid out store, and then just getting out, that's what matters.

It's okay if it costs more. It's okay if there isn't like a super exotic selection since I shop pretty basic anyway. The interesting thing about my personal best scenario is it's not about a specific store or two, but instead it's just the limit of how many stores I go to. Some weeks, my two stores might be Walmart and Costco. Other weeks I go to. I go to. all the in the international market. Some weeks, I drive 40 minutes to Trader Joe's. It all depends on what we need that week, but I would rather adjust our shopping list to my own shopping convenience to my own best scenario than to get every food ever at the lowest price possible. I'm guessing you're catching a theme now on that. So create your best scenario. It will likely

complement what you already said matters, but it will definitely show you where you might be able to rethink your routine. And even if you can't follow your best scenario every time, it just gives you a really great jumping off point. Six, keep a list. There is a chance that what matters to you is the freedom to like wander the store and buy whatever you feel like buying. But for most people, a list is a huge help to any number of grocery shopping priorities. A list keeps you from buying more than you need, which helps you save money if that's, you know, your thing. A list keeps you from spending more time shopping and like putting away stuff and finding places to store extra stuff, which helps you if saving time is what matters to you, right? A list just keeps you on track

of what you're buying, which is super helpful for most people, no matter the priority. You can add to the list as you shop, but like having a list to start from is hugely helpful. So how might you keep a list? I would start with what matters, of course. always, and then choose first either analog or digital, depending on what makes the most sense. I feel like that's a really good place to start. If you and someone else in your house share the shopping load, but you don't always know who's going to go to the store, it's nice to have a shared digital list so either person can go and know what you need, right? You could have a dry erase board in the kitchen that you constantly add to. You can have an index card on the fridge where you just like,

you do the same thing that you add to it, but then you just take that index card with you when you go to the store. However, you keep a list, the important thing is to keep one and to do it in a way that makes sense for you. And because one of my personal grocery shopping priorities is ease and efficiency and convenience, I rewrite my shopping list and put it into categories. I list like all the produce together first, freezer stuff is together at the end, and then everything else is kind of grouped together. You get the idea. It just helps me not forget something that I didn't notice on the list. You know, we've all done it. It drives me bonkers. And I'm actively trying to avoid being driven bonkers. So that's one thing I do. There is more than one way to keep a

grocery list. So in light of the other principles, just think of a helpful way to keep yours. Just make sure you keep one. I just think it'll be a really huge help to you unless the wandering is your priority. And finally, principle number seven, your time is valuable too. This is a tough one to get behind for a lot of us. I think a lot of us were probably raised with a very different mentality. Saving money was the only thing ever worth saving. But saving time is also helpful for some of us. The amount of time you spend pouring over store flyers and coupons and making five different lists for five different stores and then actually going to those stores, that's a lot of time. It's a lot of time. It might be worth it in the name of what matters, but it also might not be. I want to say very strongly that your time and sanity have a

cost just like your budget does. Pay attention to that and maybe claim a little freedom from that if you need to. It is a common thing I hear from a lot of you that your time just isn't valuable. So remember that it is. Your time costs something too, probably more than you're giving it. So to recap, name what matters. Choose what to accept and what to change. You cannot have it all. rethink your routine, create your best scenario as a jumping off point, keep a list, and remember that your time is valuable too. Now you might be really frustrated with me right now because I did not give you any tips on where to buy what stuff or what stores to go to or any like super practical things.

But you know I can't do that because what matters to you doesn't matter to everyone else. We all have different needs and priorities and schedules and budgets. one person's lazy genius solution to grocery shopping is just to buy everything at Whole Foods. Sure, it costs more, but the quality is excellent. Organic food is super important to that person. They have an Amazon partnership so you can get a discount and deliveries from Whole Foods, which is hugely helpful. And the experience is always great.

I've never shopped personally at Whole Foods where I've like, that was a bummer. It's really lovely. So if that's your best scenario, you're going to lean hard into that. But that is obviously not the solution for the grad student. student who's living on basically nothing but still has to eat. She's probably going to shop at Aldi sales and sacrifice some quality for cost. And both scenarios are valuable and good and count equally. But I cannot give you a magic formula for grocery shopping because there literally isn't one. Aldi does have some great organic options at a reasonable price. Sure, Target and Costco,

they give you a discount if you use their credit card. Whole Foods will always have the most beautiful produce and well-sourced proteins and stuff. Trader Joe's, fun and mostly cheap. But there isn't a universal grocery store for all of us in all stages of our life. And there isn't a universal way of grocery shopping for all stages of our lives. That's why this is the lazy genius guide to grocery shopping. You have to think like a lazy genius and look beyond the prices and the list and name what matters and then create a system that makes the most sense for you. I will be live on Instagram this Thursday around noon Eastern time. So now that you've listened to this episode, I want you to think through how these principles

apply to your specific situation. And if you still have specific questions about how to create your your own system, ask me on Thursday on Instagram. I'm at the lazy genius. Okay, that is it for today. Don't forget that the ultimate bundle splash sale starts next week on the 16th and the swap will be included in that bundle. The link to the VIP list to get a heads up on that and many other things is in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening today. I appreciate you. each and every one of you. Until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra, and I'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life

because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, But there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.