Our guest poster today is a woman who does it all! Heather Sokol is a married mother of 3 beautiful, active girls. In between carpool, playgrounds and other miscellaneous mom jobs, she teaches others how to live life inexpensively.
Between the laundry, work, planning dinner, cooking dinner and clipping coupons, squeezing in the actual trip to the store can often be just a little too much. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could share the load once in awhile? If only you could send your spouse to the store – without blowing your budget!
This was my dream, but the hubby inevitably returned home with the wrong thing, picked up extras we didn’t need or couldn’t find what I really wanted. He now stops at the grocery store at least once each week, with a little advanced planning & teaching him the art of couponing.
Plan ahead.
This is something you should be doing before every, single shopping trip. It is especially important when sending someone who isn’t use to grocery shopping. Figure out what is on sale, clip the coupons and send him in with an exact list. Coupons are actually easier on a guy than regular grocery shopping – it’s really hard to go wrong when there is a picture right there on the coupon.
Map it out.
He wants to find what he’s looking for as quickly as possible. You may know from experience that condiments are in the middle of aisle 9, but someone who doesn’t spend hours each year at the grocery store is going to wander around awhile first. When you know the exact location, include it on his list. If your store prints them, go ahead and grab a few maps the next time you’re there. You can point out exactly where he needs to go.
Be specific.
Men are hunters – they want to get in, grab their prey and leave. This means you have to give them an exact list. If you say, “stop at the store for some fruit” you’ll get every berry, apple and citrus variety known to man. Or, a single bunch of bananas. But, tell a guy to get 3 pounds of Granny Smith apples, and he’ll bring home a bag of the best sour apples in the store! If you need a certain size or flavor of something for your recipe, be sure to mention it or he’ll pick whatever he likes best.
These techniques have allowed us to share the grocery shopping responsibilities – I create the weekly shopping lists, we often clip coupons together and either one of us can actually stop at the store when the time comes. It’s perfect since one of my favorite grocery stores is a bit of a trek from our home but not too far from his office. He even keeps reusable bags in the car!
Do you have any good tricks to sharing household duties?
Do you have a Thrifty idea? Did you save a ton of money this week? Do you have a Thrifty deal you want to share? If so, please leave a comment or link up below!
Please leave a link back to Coupon Teacher so that we can all share ideas.
This is linked to Life as Mom and Madame Deals.
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