Food shopping: optimizing it all but still enjoying it.

From time to time everyone of us has to reconsider our food shopping strategies. You either move to a new area, have a new baby, or send old baby away for college, get laid off from work, start a new demanding job, or simply discover new stores in the neighborhood. Either way your old shopping strategy falls apart and you have to piece it back again ensuring everything is covered, feasible and optimal.

You want to remember it all - baby products, kids' breakfast foods, fruits and vegetables, meats, breads, dinner components, cleaning supplies - and renew it all on a weekly basis. What is your strategy for accomplishing this?

For a few years I have been encouraging you to create and utilize a Master Shopping List and even posted  my list for you to copy and edit. I advised to check the supplies before leaving for the store, crossing everything you don't need to get, take a pencil with you to the store and check-mark the items as you drop them into a cart.  But guess what, I am seriously questioning this strategy now.

It may be the new baby that we got that requires a load extra items; or the frequent long lines in the meat department, but I came to realize that my weekly shopping became an impossibly tedious and dull process that I am always trying to postpone. It takes me about an hour to zigzag the supermarket and efficiently gather all the items on my list. But approximately after 30 min it stops being fun. The pleasures of smelling fresh produce, trying samples, browsing through and discovering new products or combinations, planning the meal in my head - all expire at about 30 min from the store entry and all my senses shut down. I feel like a pawn in a reality show trying to mark off all the remaining items in a least possible time. At about 60 min threshold I get angry and start transferring my anger to the foods in my basket. A very sad beginning of the food as a pleasure process.

 I discover that I enjoy short specialized shopping trips much more than I enjoy one long exhaustive food purchase.  Biweekly stops at a bakery, weekly order from a fruit and vegetables farm, one or two quick specific visits to the supermarket (breakfast stuff only, dinner products, diary and meat items).  I still do shopping lists but not the long master shopping list that I believe turns me into a food soldier.  I create short lists of absolutely-do-not-forget products and try keeping the number of items in them below 20. This way I can keep my eyes on the shelves rather than in the list and let me mind explore and discover, noting, touching and smelling the items. I feel that I am adding fun as a new component to my overall shopping puzzle that already included time and money optimization, overall product coverage and product quality.  The new strategy is definitely more time consuming but the fun factor makes it much less strenuous.

I think long shopping lists are still great for some people (aka food soldiers)  and some situations. If, like my father, all you want is to restock on the items your wife asked without adding any frivolities, you cannot accomplish it without a long list.  If you have to assemble an elaborate meal consisting of tens of obscure ingredients, you need the list and the focus on the list. You cannot avoid the long list also when coming back from a vacation.  But for the rest of the days I insist on making my food shopping an adventure. What about you?

Image via Flickr, distributed under CCL.