How to shop for groceries – some unusual but useful tips

Sounds simple, but after seeing this tip, Use a Binder Clip to Hold Your Grocery List in Your Cart, I thought I’d add some more tips:

  1. Shop along the perimeter first. The deals should be at the end of each aisle, for one thing. For another, the essentials tend to be on the
    perimeter of the store: vegetables, meat, dairy, grain all tend to be there. Those are the things you should be buying the most of for healthiest eating. For another, by the time you get through the permeter, you may be too tired to impulse buy.
  2. Take your own music. Musak in grocery stores will rot your brain. Seriously. Get your own earphones and drown it out. If you find grocery shopping stressful, play relaxing music. If you want to get in and out, play fast music. But listening to bad grocery store music just makes the whole experience worse.
  3. Wear sunglasses. This sound ridiculous I know, but most groceries stores are overly lit and if you are in them enough you might get a headache.
  4. If you go with a child, establish a limit of impulse buys. Same goes for yourself. If the limit is one or two, and you now have three, put one back. For you, try this: don’t put it in your basket, but say “I will come back for it later”. If you really want it, you will. If you are too tired or even forget about it, chances are you didn’t need it.
  5. Don’t shop at eye level. The inexpensive and non-impulse buy food will be lower. You’ll be amazed at what you see down on the bottom shelves.
  6. Pick the best times to shop. If you don’t know, ask the store manager and the manager of the check-out clerks. They should know exactly what the busiest time are. Also, ask them things like: when does new food shipment arrive? when do things go on sale and why? Things like that. 
  7. Practice your deep breathing skills. My grocery store is designed to almost always have lineups. When I get to one, I practice things like improving my posture, deep breathing, what have you. If you are going to be stuck in line and you know it, prepare for it so it is productive and not frustrating.

2 thoughts on “How to shop for groceries – some unusual but useful tips”

  1. ….Why do I get the feeling that you hate grocery shopping? lol!
    Generally speaking I utilize similar guidelines, except for 3 things:
    1) The grocery stores I shop at, tend to play GREAT music already, so I don’t have to bring my own. 🙂
    2) At 5’2″ (barely), the lower shelves ARE, at MY “eye level”! lol! And,
    3) Sunglasses???!!! (Really?)
    The only thing I would add is, always WATCH when your items are being scanned! 90% of the time, at least one item will scan as a higher than advertised price, (esp produce) and some stores have a policy to give you the item at no charge, if you challenge it!
    Happy Shopping!

  2. Hate it!
    1) At my store, I am surprised whenever one good song comes on.
    2) I was thinking at the 3 ft, not 5 ft. The lowest priced things are very low., from tomato soup to salt to …most things
    3) yup.

    Another tip: when stuff is bundled priced (e.g. 3 for $2), you may not have to buy the entire bundle. I noticed that the software my store uses prices each item individually. It doesn’t seem to be able to figure out if you bought the right amount or not. So if I see something like that, I will just buy the amount I need and not buy the bundle.

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