I realized this afternoon as I was sitting at my work desk and jotting down a few items on a slip of paper to pick up at the store this evening before heading home for the night that for nearly twenty years I have been keeping track of an unending, perpetual grocery list. Even though I think of my family of three kids as being a fairly small one—it never fails that when I return from the almost daily trip to the grocery store thinking that I’ve finally caught up—there is something else that we have run out of.
We keep a running grocery list in the kitchen that people are forever adding items to as we run out or if there is something that someone has a particular hankering for. But, I also seem to always have a list on my desk, in my datebook or tucked into my coat pocket. I am sure that years from now I will be cleaning out old purses and coats and find crinkled grocery lists from my years of family life! There is always milk, eggs, cheese, pretzels, and yogurt to get—not to mention the cereal we seem to go through like it was bird seed for an entire aviary of feathered friends.
I wonder how many years it will take after my last child grows up and leaves home for me to get used to shopping for one? Will I ever be able to shake the years of grocery list training or will it take a while before I realize that I don’t really need to get a gallon of milk every other day? I wonder if I will look back on my years of parenting and raising my kids as one long, endless grocery list that I could never get completely caught up on? For now, I can only wonder (as I remind myself to stop at the store on the way home)…
Also: Other Ways to Save at the Grocery Store