3 Tips To Stress Free Grocery Shopping

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, INC. and The Coca-Cola Company, all opinions are mine alone. #ServeWithACoke #CollectiveBias

3 Tips To Stress Free Grocery Shopping

I am a person who loves to be at the grocery store. My family and friends even go so far as to make fun of me. I can spend anywhere from 1.5 hrs – 2.5 hrs at a time.

I like to savor that alone time. I put my earbuds in, play an audiobook and take my sweet time.

Except, lately, I'm finding I’m short on time.

Everyone, it seems, is short on time, don't you think?

I’ve recently been thinking of ways to capitalize the time I do have.

Especially right now during the holiday season because even though it's the holidays, the kids still have all their scheduled activities and I want to spend any bit of “down” time I can find with them.

I want time to drive around and look at neighborhoods with Christmas Lights.

I want snuggles on the couch.

I just want precious time with my little loves.

You know what I don’t want to do when I get home from a 2 hour shopping trip?

Cook.

I realize I am a food blogger so I shouldn't really admit that, but it's true. After all that shopping and thinking about meal prepping, I just don’t feel like it.

Plus, I don’t want to spend hours away from the kids to then come home and spend another hour away from them in the kitchen.

But after all that shopping, I'm always so hungry!

As I’ve been thinking about this more and more lately, I’ve come up with a few simple tips to survive grocery shopping.

Create a meal plan BEFORE the day you are shopping.

To do this, I keep a file on either my phone or computer labeled “Meals”. As an idea comes to me, I add it throughout the week. By the time I need to shop, I have at least a week’s worth of ideas typed in.

Have an organized binder for your coupons.

This has saved me so much time. I used to have all my coupons just shoved in an envelope and I’d have to flip thru the entire envelope searching for each one. Now I have a binder with plastic inserts (baseball card sized) and I have it set it up according to the way my local Stop & Shop is set up. For example, my binder starts with produce and deli coupons because that is where I start my shopping. Next, it has organic items, then chips and snacks etc. This makes it so much easier and quicker to locate which items to purchase based on what coupons I have on hand.

Stop & Shop/ Coca-Cola™ Meal Deals

I already know I don’t want to spend my entire morning shopping to come home and have to make lunch, especially during the holiday season when I’m doing so much cooking and hosting anyway. Not wanting to cook though doesn’t mean I have to hit a drive-thru on the way home. Right there, in my Stop & Shop Deli area are these great meal deals. You just grab them and go! Easy.

I know these tips seem pretty simple but I promise you, if you use them, you WILL save time.

Let me just take a minute to get into a bit more detail about #3, the Grab and Go Meal Deal. I'm not talking junk either. I’m talking an actual filling meal. You get to choose either a salad, wrap, half or whole sub as the entrée. Then, you get a side choice to go with it of either sliced apples, Rod's Pretzel Sticks, Deep River Chips or Cheese Fusions Cheese Bites. And of course, you get a 20 oz. drink included, from which you can choose DASANI®, Coca-Cola™, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar™, Diet Coke® or Sprite®.

Before I tried these meal combos for the whole family, I tried one out for myself. I got myself a Chicken Caesar Salad, Apple Slices and a DASANI water. It was a great combination and good sized portions.

These meal deals are very reasonably priced too.

Besides being a time saver on shopping days, these meal deals are going to be my go to on Monday nights. Monday is our busiest day for running the kids around from activity to activity and we’re always scrambling for dinner.