When I was about 10 years old, I loved to go shopping for groceries with my mom and her sister. This for only one reason: to have fun and play.
Indeed, my young cousin was there as well and every single time, we were having one hour of pure childhood fun, checking all the toys, and playing hide and seek.
Is groceries shopping this fun for you these days?
Or is it more like “Damn, it’s time again to get there.”?
Losing one hour of your time (more? really?!?), with impatient children driving you crazy, and huge waiting queues?
Then there is a way to change this.
You can make it shorter.
It can be twice as fun.
And also cheaper.
Grocery shopping is a project
Grocery shopping can be managed like a project.
It can be strategically planned as such.
It has a vision: getting food, drinks and other supplies to feed your family and keep your home clean and tidy.
It has a scope: you usually have roughly the same list of items to purchase.
It has a timeframe: from what I’ve read on the Internet, I got shocked to learn that our close neighbor France has an average of 2h and 41min of grocery shopping per week!!!
On our side, we are around 30 min per two weeks.
It could be 45 min per month but the issue is that our fridge isn’t this big and also because fruits and vegetables wouldn’t feel that fresh after one month…
Do you wonder how is it possible?
The solution is actually pretty simple and logical.
It’s so much faster once you apply it!
Let’s assume you’re a couple (or a family).
All what you have to do is to leverage the power of each of your family members.
We are two adults able to handle groceries at the moment, so first, we simply split the groceries’ list in two.
Then, the best part of this secret method is the second one: you split yourselves once entering the grocery store with one shopping trolley each.
As logical as it sounds, you’ll end up with your entire groceries trip time divided by the number of family members.
Not to say that you have to leverage the power of habits too by always keeping the same store area for each member in order for him/her to improve his record time by just repeating the same path and picking almost the same article in the same quantity every two weeks.
Your life is a game. Your grocery shopping too!
You now have the key to improve your return on time investment.
What about you make this timeslot as fun as it’s fast?
As we split in two teams in front of the supermarket (we take one child each), we are gamifying the next half hour by betting on who is gonna be the faster to the finish line!
What’s funny is that your potential complainy-children turns into a motivation machine so that you get faster in order to win the race!
While writing these lines, it makes me think that we could actually play even more and bet real stuff like “The team who wins will have to prepare the lunch for the other one!”, or something similar.
Routine makes it cheaper!
When we enter the grocery store, we are somehow in autopilot mode with the routine we built over time: same store, same path, same articles on the list.
We don’t look to other products anymore as we are on a mission: cross the finish line the first!
This way we avoid temptation.
Factor in the fact that we go shopping only once every two weeks (which also helps to reduce your exposure to marketing lures) and you are all set for saving money with cheaper grocery bills on the long run.
How fun and quick are your groceries?!?
I’m curious about your situation: how do you organize yourself? Do you know ways to make it even faster and funnier?
Sidenote A: there is the alternative to get your groceries delivered but we don’t use it often (at all?) as 1/ in Switzerland you have to pay for it until you reach a certain amount, and 2/ you don’t always have the entire choice you find in stores.
Sidenote B: regarding the drive-in facilities, it doesn’t exist in Switzerland. We already used it in France and even if it’s quite handy, there is still the issue that you might not get some articles you ordered as not available…
''How to buy my first home in Switzerland' guide | …
''How to buy my first home in Switzerland' guide |...
