She Does Better

Emilie Burke

My Weekly Grocery List // Spring 2019

// Food, Frugality, Planning

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Meal planning is.. a good idea. It’s one that I’ve floundered on a lot over the last couple of years. The idea of planning out the meals for the whole month, doing the big monthly grocery shop, and then just a weekly (or semi-monthly, even) produce run to supplement is so appealing.

I have loved watching and learning from Brittany’s monthly meal planning for years. I have watched all the videos. I get the system.

The reality, though, is that I do not have the bandwidth to monthly meal plan. I don’t have 30 meals in my brain that I can add to a list.

What our grocery shopping looks like, then, is that every two weeks I go to the store and get everything we need, spending about $150 each time. Three hundred dollars for grocery for two is a lot, but it’s not terrible. Since we value quality food and good ingredients, it’s a sacrifice we’re willing to make.

In my ideal world, I’d love to have all of my groceries come from three sources:

  • a meat subscription service (like Butcher Box)
  • a CSA or ugly vegetable subscription service (like Hungry Harvest which I loved when I lived in Baltimore)
  • pantry essentials, like rice and flour, delivered to my door (through something like Amazon or Thrive Market)

Unfortunately, this reality isn’t possible today. I think Butcher Box is overpriced, there are no CSAs in our area, and I value the time savings of purchasing pantry essentials through a subscription less than I do the cost savings of buying them myself. I’m optimistic that the market will catch up to my ideal soon, but for now we’ve got to make do.

I recently signed up for a Shipt subscription. For $99 per year, I can place an order through the Shipt app or website. If the order is greater than $35, there are no delivery fees. Comparing this to Kroger ClickList, where I had to pay $6 to have to go pick up my groceries myself, Shipt pays for itself in just 16 orders (somewhere between 6 and 8 months, I’m guessing)- not including the convenience of having the groceries delivered right to my house instead of the 20-30 minutes it would take me to go pick them up!

I have some serious travel time coming. The cool thing about Shipt is that you can place an order anywhere. When I’ll be in SF for 10 days, I can place a Shipt order to my hotel room! Without a kitchen I won’t be cooking Chicken Cordon Bleu, but I can buy lunches that are 1. much cheaper than the alternative (eating out) and 2. better for me (because I can control the ingredients!).

Jury is still out on Shipt, but I’ll be sure to update. For now, I’m pretty into it.

I have a weekly grocery list that I use as a starting point every week. I think of it as a things to check. I don’t buy toilet paper every week, but I do check the toilet paper every week. The goal of this list is to make sure that we never run out of things that are going to force us into the grocery store mid-week. So far, it’s been working well.

Let me know if there’s anything you’d add!

Here is my list:

  • Toilet paper
  • Paper towels
  • Avocados
  • Eggs- at least 2 dozen
  • Peppers
  • Onions
  • Broccoli
  • Spinach
  • Sweet Potato
  • Chicken breasts (Boneless, skinless)
  • Salmon
  • Tortillas
  • Clementines
  • Bananas
  • Berries or Grapes
  • Bread
  • Tofu (Extra firm)

No, I don’t NEED that

// Frugality

Reading Time: 3 minutesI really want a massage.

A couple of weeks before Valentine’s Day, I turned to C and said “I want a massage for Valentine’s Day. You should get me a massage.”

Then the week before Valentine’s Day, I circled up with him that Hey, We’re just going to go out to dinner right. No presents, right? 

“BUT YOU ASKED FOR A MASSAGE?!”

We settled on no presents. For the record, we went to Star Wars and a delicious dinner.

 

Since before Valentine’s Day, I’ve wanted a massage. The longer I’ve waited for it, the more I have heard the voice in my head telling me that I deserved it. Look at all you’ve accomplished lately. Look at how you’re managing the house and Bo and work and the gym and trying to build a social life in a new city all alone, all at the same time! Look at how much time you’ve spent outside lately and all those books you’ve crushed this week. 

That voice today had me downloading an app called Zeel. At first, I was just googling it but because of some blocks I have on my phone that are meant to help me not spend, their website was blocked. Instead, I downloaded the app. Almost as soon as it was on my phone, I found myself looking for an open time slot on my calendar to book a massage for me.

I got to the part where you have to enter the credit card information before I was reminded that my “Emilie spending”- the category of money that I can spend anyway I want without having to worry about- looks like this right now.

I’ve spent a lot already this month. I’ve spent a lot of the money. I’ve spent almost all of the money I had allocated to spend on BS this month. And now, I’m in a position where I have more wants than money in a month.

No.

No is a complete sentence. Deciding to spend is a tradeoff. It essentially looks like this: Do I want to put X towards the wedding this month? OR do I want to put X – $100 so that I could spend $100 on the quick hit that a massage would give me?

I don’t NEED the massage. I want the massage, but I want to finish the wedding fund more.

I’ve been reading on frugality a lot. I recently finished Meet the Frugalwoods, a memoir chronicling the journey to financial independence by husband and wife couple the Frugalwoods, and The Year of Less, chronicling author Cait Flanders’ 12-month spending ban.

At the beginning of the week, I told myself I wasn’t going to spend money. I was going to do a “No Spend Week” just to reorient my spending and reset some spending behaviors. And, it has been so hard. I thought this was going to be a non-challenge, but every day I have found myself faced with some spending question.

On Monday, I realized I was out of wine. Last night (Tuesday), I had my night class, so I didn’t get home until almost 930. At which point I had to walk Bo again, eat a quick dinner, and get into bed. I’ve been working really hard lately, and I’m so grateful for these opportunities (and am really trying not to sound whiny), and the voice in my head has gotten louder. Emilie, you deserve this. 

But I don’t NEED it. I want it. And I’ve used up all of my “wants” money for the month.

Maybe May will be the month I get a massage.