Many stay-at-home parents shudder just a bit as the last day of school comes to a close.
Lots of things contribute to this — days stretch out endlessly before us, rife with opportunities for offspring bickering. The pressure to create a perfect summer is intense. Time spent on Facebook ups the ante, creating the perfect storm of guilt about not finding the summer camp the kids requested (seriously, is it my fault the nearest skateboarding camp is four hours away?!), my own crash-and-burn attitude upon leaving behind the breakneck speed of school, and the many Leave-It-To-Beaver pictures that begin gracing my news feed come June.
Children frolicking on beaches, s’mores by the campfire, family selfies on road trips and vacations. I mean, for the love, how is it that some people can make even a long car ride look like a romping good time?! I can barely maintain my own sanity starting around hour three; I’m certainly not able to hold the phone at arm’s length to capture four smiling faces as we share the wide open road.
At any rate, this year I was oddly sanguine (oooh, good word) about the end of school. This was the first time I could see summertime advantages prior to school’s end — it usually takes a couple of weeks into summer break before I register that not setting a 6:00am alarm, chilling out about who eats breakfast as well as when they eat it, and not needing to pack snacks & lunches (hallelujah) is an awesome thing.
Today I tackled what’s proven to be a major challenge in summers gone by: grocery shopping with both kids in tow. But this year I’d come up with what seemed like a pretty good plan. I decided keeping them busy was the key so I divided my grocery list three ways, making sure that each kid had items to find in almost every section of the store.
My shopping trips, like most things I don’t exactly enjoy, usually follow a plan designed for efficiency. While I don’t despise grocery shopping, I don’t want to spend hours wandering around in there either. Thus the plan of attack. I write my grocery list based on the store’s layout; this way I’m much less likely to forget an item or have to double back to find it. (Of course, this does come back to bite me when they move entire aisles. Really, they ought to warn consumers before they do that sort of thing.)
I know this makes me sound a little nuts, but whatever. It works for me.
So I’m explaining the plan to the kids as we’re getting out of the car this morning (while praying fervently that they don’t lose their lists because then we’d be totally screwed), and both of them are on board. Bear asks if I’ve brought extra pens (that’s my girl!), and as T-man places his first item in the cart he wants to know if they’ll be paying for their things (bless his heart). Two items down, dozens to go, and we’re off and running.
Pharmacy. Refrigerated section (juice and yogurt). Household supplies. Dairy. Cereal.
Just kidding. I’m not going to make you guys read through the grocery sections on my list. That would be cruel. And painfully tedious. Although you might have already reached that conclusion simply based on the fact that I’m writing a post about grocery shopping.
Oh my God, my life is boring.
So anyway, this tactic was hugely successful (at least for today) — absolutely no incidents of “if you don’t stop that right this minute we’ll be in here forever and when we finally DO get home you’ll be doing extra chores for your trouble.” Woo hoo!
As a bonus, I got to sneak in all kinds of critical thinking under the radar. Why do we buy Minute Maid instead of Simply Orange juice with no pulp, even though we do buy Simply Orange OJ with pineapple? Why do we choose store brand shredded cheese instead of name brand? Why is it a better deal to buy the mega-box of snack bars instead of two small boxes of the same product?
Unit prices, name brand versus generic, expiration dates, being responsible for the items on your list getting into the cart, and limiting our impulse buys to one box of cookies…all great smart shopper lessons squeezed into one trip.
I’ll have to wait and see if this sticks, but the shared list concept is very promising indeed.
Riddle from the Middle 