111. The Art of Honest Organizing: Grocery Shopping

How honest are you with yourself about what you buy? Does the purchase fit your current lifestyle? Do you feel yourself wasting money often, because you're not being honest about what you really need (or want) right now? In this new, ongoing series, we're going to talk about various scenarios and get honest with ourselves about how much we need right now, and WHERE we need it FROM. In this first episode, we'll cover Grocery Shopping. We'll talk about finding a balance of cooking at home, eating out, and not feeling guilty when choosing either.

Transcript

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So today we're going to start a new series called The Art of Honest Organization. But unlike other series that we've done, there's not going to be a part one through five or a part one through three. We're just going to have an ongoing series that has different topics along the way. However, we are going to follow the same format for series in that the first episode will be in the regular podcast and the additional episodes will be in the bonus content. So I want to go ahead and remind you up front, if you haven't already subscribed to the premium slash bonus content, I highly suggest you do that. The minimum contribution is only $3 a month, and you have access to all prior bonus episodes, include all prior series that we've done to this point. So, what do I mean by the art of honest organization? Well, what we're going to do is we're going to start being more honest with ourselves. This isn't necessarily a series that talks about being honest with other people. Certainly that is important. But today we're going to talk about being honest with ourselves when it comes to grocery shopping. Why is this important? I would say 70% of my clients, now, this is not an exact figure. I'm just guessing based on my experience with people and their homes over the years, is that about 70% of people say that they really kick themselves when they come home from the grocery store, they put everything up, and then three or four days later, things are starting to spoil. Maybe they haven't washed produce and they forget it's in there. By the time they go to grab it, it doesn't look great. So they toss it. Maybe they've purchased some meat and they put it down in the meat drawer and they just completely forget about it. And a week later, maybe they notice it, maybe they smell it, and they're like, well, shoot, I just spent $20 on a pound of salmon and now it's gone. I'm not going to be able to use it. So what I started doing is I started being realistic about how often I'm home, how often I'm gone, and what my skill set is in terms of cooking and preparing food. And one thing that I had to get honest with myself, especially recently, is that I'm not competing in fitness anymore, at least not right now. My goal right now is to make sure that I'm eating enough protein, that I'm getting enough food throughout the day, because sometimes I get busy like most moms. The other thing is that I need to focus on being healthy again because my eating and my workout habits got off track, because I am a single mom and because there are all these other things going on with my child. So I have to say to myself, as much as I want to cook at home and be that kind of mom, I also have to be honest with myself that a lot of times we are out in the car and my child gets hungry. And a lot of the stuff that he is eating right now doesn't really pack well. That's one issue we've had with school lunches, is that sometimes I have to send him with a banana and maybe some crackers and maybe just a small chicken tender that maybe will taste good by lunch, maybe it won't. And then when I pick him up from school, I either have something for him, like a hamburger, or we run and get something. Where he's gonna go to school this fall, I think he's gonna have a few more options in terms of what he chooses from. I think as the kids get older, there is a little bit more of a buffet for them at lunchtime. Plus, they're not as picky as what they were for the most part when they were a lot younger. So, with that said, there have been times that I have spent way too much at the grocery store because I'm planning on coming home and at least portioning everything out, you know, prepping some meals, having the containers, and then I can take the containers with me. That worked really well when I was competing. It also worked really well when I was working in an office and competing, or if I went to a consistent client's house and knew that, okay, they're not going to be home or in the kitchen where my food is going to be in their way. So I can keep my food in the kitchen whenever I'm hungry. I can microwave it in their microwave, and then I can eat while I'm working. Whereas some households I go to, you know, maybe the wife is home and she's preparing lunch, or maybe there's a nanny and she's trying to get dinner prepped. And so I try to keep all of that in mind when I go grocery shopping. And here's the notes that I put together based on my personal experience and where I'm at in this season of life. And my hope today is that you can hear my notes in my situation and put together a similar list that will help you put together a more realistic shopping list when you go so that you feel like what you're bringing home is actually being used. You're not wasting money, you're not kicking yourself, you're not feeling guilty because you let something spoil or expire. The other thing that's gonna do is gonna help keep your refrigerator more organized. So instead of having a bunch of stuff at home that takes up a lot of space in your refrigerator, it gets lost in the back, or it spoils and the things around it can't be found as easily, and the whole thing just becomes overwhelming every time you open up the door. The goal with this is that you're gonna get more organized with your honest grocery list. You come home, you put things up when you actually know that you're gonna go for those items, you actually use them. And the times that you're out running around, those are the times you plan a little bit more to not treat yourself. I think a lot of people look at fast food or curbside pickup as a treat, uh, maybe spending a little bit more money on a pasta meal, but maybe it comes with a salad and some bread, and maybe it's a big portion. Maybe you can split it into two meals. So those are the kind of things we're gonna talk about today. The maximum time I'm gonna spend on these types of episodes is about 12 minutes. So I'm already about halfway in. So I'm gonna try to format all of these the same way to where you know that if you start listening, you can listen pretty quickly, you can get the information, and you can go on about your day. I know some of the longer episodes you may have to stop and start. And if this is something with it being a Saturday that you want to implement today, then you're gonna be able to stop listening to this episode, go to the grocery store, and feel like by the time you wake up tomorrow that you have your fridge a little bit more organized, and maybe you've spent a little bit less, and maybe you just feel like you're in a little bit more control with a diet that you're on. Maybe you're working with a nutritionist, maybe your kids are getting confused when they open up the refrigerator. I think all of this is gonna trickle down and just make your life a whole lot easier. Okay, so here are three notes that I made in regards to my current situation. I will talk a lot more about this in future episodes, but I think that pointing out three different scenarios is gonna be good for today. Number one, one thing that I have to be honest with myself about is I do not like, nor do I like eating salads that I make at home. Now, there's a lettuce that I like at Whole Foods. I like eating grape tomatoes. I usually pick up a package of those. I like avocado on my salad. I have a dressing at home that I like. The problem is that it's not just trying to pick up the habit of preparing something at home, is that for me, in the type of salad that I like, it's very time consuming. So the one thing I've become really honest about myself is that I really like Chick-fil-A salads. I like the fact that I can get a grilled chicken breast on top of a salad where it's easy and convenient to order in the app. I can add extra egg, I can take off the cheese. I usually get two dressing packets and one is leftover. So if I do make a small salad at home at some point or I do put together some kind of wrap, then I'm gonna have an extra dressing that I know that I like that isn't like a heavy, creamy ranch, which is also a dressing I have at home that I use for like dipping sauces. So what I've started doing is when I go to Whole Foods or when I go to Target or wherever I'm getting my groceries, I just go completely past all of the sections that have the produce that would require me making a salad that I like. This also saves me time in the grocery store. So when I walk into produce, I immediately go for blueberries because that's what my son likes. I grab some bananas, and then maybe I grab a couple of peaches, some asparagus, or whatever vegetable I'm eating that day or that week, and then I head on to the next section. So this has saved me a lot of time. There are times that I'll buy everything. I'll buy the lettuce, the tomatoes, the avocado. I have eggs, but then when I'm actually ready to go eat the salad, I don't have time to boil the eggs to put the hard-boiled eggs on there. Maybe the lettuce is okay, but the tomatoes are bad, or vice versa. Maybe I ran out of one thing but not the others, and I haven't gone back to the store. So what I found was happening was I would get lettuce four or five days later, I would go to open it to wash it, and it was already starting to look bad. And then I'm like, well, I'm not even really sure I want to eat this because I'm already starting off on the wrong foot where a lot of it is brown. It doesn't look very appealing. And then by the time I'm gonna wash the tomatoes and cut the avocado and boil the eggs, it just seemed like a very daunting task for me. It wasn't something that I enjoyed doing, looked forward to doing, made the time. So one thing I got honest with myself is I need to start getting salads, picking them up. I can even try different places. And the great thing about Chick-fil-A is that my son will eat fries from there. I often get rewards points. And so there are times that I'll get free parts of a meal, whether it's a free drink, maybe his fries are free. And so not only am I saving money by not making this stuff at home, it's convenient. I order it in the app, I pull in, they hand it to me, I leave with the item. I can even bring it home and eat it. So it's not like I have to eat it while I'm out. It just feels like I know for a fact that when I spend this money, I'm actually gonna eat the item. I'm not gonna lose a bunch of time, and I'm not going to feel guilty about having to throw out stuff that I'm not gonna use. Okay, next thing. I always eat breakfast at home. I have to be completely honest about this because when I wake up, I'm not always out the door right away. So I make coffee at home with almond milk and a little bit of sugar. I usually eat some kind of egg. Sometimes I do like a pre-made fritata, sometimes I actually make scrambled eggs, but that is something that's consistent for me. So even if I don't buy a lot of lunch items or dinner items, I always have breakfast items. And so if I only have time to grab a few things, or if I only have $20 or $30 in my budget to get more groceries, I always make sure that my turkey sausage, my chicken sausage, my eggs, my almond milk, all of that stuff is always stocked because I can also turn around at night and make a breakfast for dinner. And that's something that's light enough in terms of the type of breakfast that I make that I could do that at the end of the day and it not be too heavy or overwhelming. Okay, let's talk about sweets. This is gonna be the third and final thing for today. I have flip-flopped back and forth, like I'm sure many of you do, where I'm like, I'm not gonna buy sweets, I don't need them. Okay, we all know we've all tried to trick ourselves with this. What I suggest is actually buying a couple of things that you like, where you like to buy them, and without being under stress so that you have them at home. Your willpower will get better as you go, as long as you don't buy out the entire ice cream section. And I say that as a former personal trainer. You have to get to a place where you feel like it's there if you want it, and you're not panicked if there isn't an option there. And I say this because the other night I ran out of chocolate and I really just wanted something small. I didn't even really want anything that big. The closest thing to me was the gas station across the street. And I thought, I'll just run over there real quick. I'll get gas, I'll get a little bit of chocolate. When I went in, the options were very small and they weren't great options. It wasn't like a type of dark chocolate that I would feel good about, where it's like, oh, this is a really great dark chocolate. I ended up picking up like a mounds bar, which is fine. I'm not coming down on gas station chocolate bars. What I'm saying is it's not exactly what I wanted, but I ended up buying it because it was the closest thing to my house and it was just something I could hurry and pick up really quick and get back home. I don't want to do that all the time. I wasn't really happy about that experience. It was fine. I wanted some dark chocolate. I ended up with the mounds with the has the dark chocolate and the coconut, and it was fine. But what I'm realizing is that part of my weekly list or the list that I have every few days is pick up the organic chocolate that you like at Whole Foods. Try to portion it out when you get it home. And then that way, if you just want a little bit, it's already portioned out and you just open up that little bag and eat it and don't feel guilty about it. Like just don't worry about it. Cause the more you sit and think, I really don't need it, I shouldn't even be thinking about it. I'm definitely not gonna drive 10 minutes to get it, then that's when you start getting distracted. And it, I think it's better to just kind of quiet your mind with a little bit of what you want instead of feeling like you're actually punishing yourself because that's not gonna lead to long-term results anyway. And even though this isn't a diet, fitness, nutrition podcast, I think balance really comes from having it all together, having everything organized, feeling like your mind is calm, your mind is organized, feeling like you're not overspending, feeling like you can find things. When you're hungry, you can go to the things you know you're gonna want to eat, and you're not just standing there bored in front of the refrigerator. So I hope this episode was helpful. Please make sure to give us a review on Apple Podcasts if you found this episode and the show helpful. We do not have that many reviews, and I would love to see what you guys think. You can comment on specific episodes or the show itself. I welcome all positive reviews. If you have negative feedback from me, that's totally fine. Why don't you email me at labelorganizing at gmail.com and we can talk. I can make improvements if it's something that I either missed or maybe it's something that you don't find is accurate. I would love to hear back from you. Okay, guys, have a great day, and I will see you in the next episode.