I used to love grocery shopping. All the colours, the aromas, the beautiful produce, and the occasional exotic find made me feel like I was in some wonderful foreign market. Back in the day, I was practically a chef, and all these sights and smells drummed up inspiration for this week’s exquisite culinary creation which I relished sharing with friends over a glass of vino on Friday night…That was ten years ago.
Now a trip to the grocery store goes down something like this…
Kid 1: Mom, can we buy some popsicles?
Kid 2: MOM! I wanna ride in the cart!
Kid 3: WWWWAAAHHH!
Kid 1: MOM, I want popsicles!!
Kid 3: WWWAAAHHH!
Kid 2: Popsicles are gross. I want ICE CREAM!
Kid 1: (shoves Kid 2) You’re gross.
Kid 2: (shoves back) Mom, Tommy shoved me!
Kid 1+2: (tussle)
Kid 1, 2, and 3: WWWWAAAH!
Me: (frantically throw Goldfish crackers, yogurt tubes, and produce they’ll never eat into the cart and avoid eye contact with other customers)
My visions of foreign markets and culinary inspiration have been shattered and replaced by a utilitarian mad-dash to meet yet another need in our busy family. Until yesterday…
Stressed out parents everywhere, I’d like you to meet my new best friend…
Online Grocery Shopping!!!
Fed up with the whole grocery debacle, yesterday, for the first time, I did it! I made my order from the comfort of my couch (from an easy-to-navigate website), chose my pick-up time, showed up at the designated spot and let other people load groceries into my car! Easy peasy and SUCH a time and hassle saver! For me, this whole experience just begs one question—why wasn’t I doing this before? Whether you’re a mom toting kids around like me or busy at work and struggling to fit the grocery run in, I implore you…Try getting your groceries online! Just try it. You can thank me later.
In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you that the fee for online grocery shopping ranges between $0 and $5 and that I did have to wait 10 minutes until someone was available to bring my order. But, hey, considering the hour or so it usually takes me to mill around the store, there is a significant time-saving here!
Best of all, you know that situation when you’re just finished shopping and ready to pay and you remember you needed baking soda which is inevitably located in the furthest aisle of the store? Well, believe me when I say that typing ‘baking soda’ into the search area is significantly faster!
