How To Determine How Often You Should Buy Groceries

It's a task as old as time, from the go-go days of hunter-gatherers to the ho-hum ways or modern click-to-buyers: Grocery shopping. Love it or loathe it, whether you're a spreadsheet-wielding meal prepper, a freezer food hack aficionado, or more of a vibey impulse grabber, you gotta eat. And planning what to eat, when, and how often has become such a common conundrum that whole industries have emerged aiming to solve the seemingly simple act of stocking up on food for one's household. But if you really pace out your shopping cadence strategically, your weeknight dinner plans will be more successful.

Outline what groceries you need to buy daily, weekly, and monthly to better streamline your shopping trips. Sometimes, which items fall into which frequency rate will be blissfully obvious, and most people will find that most goods fall into the middle category. But embarking on larger monthly shopping trips will keep those loads lighter on weekly visits, while occasional day-of purchases will bolster the freshness of your favorite meals' ingredients. All together, knowing exactly what you need when also helps reduce food waste.

If you care about any of this, it's likely that you already have something of a grocery pattern, or you're at least a little bit curious about the concept. If you're just starting out, give yourself a full use circuit to get a product baseline. Whatever your schedule is now, on your next full shop, make note of your total inventory, along with the purchase date. As things run out, update your inventory with the finish date. Keep the list wherever is convenient enough for you to actually keep it accurately updated; on your phone, in a notebook, on a dry erase board, just anywhere that makes it easy to follow through on the tracking. Once you know how long it truly takes you to get through a box of pasta, then you can replenish it at the ideal rate for making that Sunday batch of basic tomato sauce.

Once you know, for example, that a box of spaghetti will last two weeks in your kitchen, you can pick up a pair on a monthly schedule instead of guessing, buying them randomly, and letting a bunch of half-full packs collect in your cabinets. It's also a better system for keeping track of things like milk, which is a particular drag when you think you've still got enough, only to end up munching on dry cereal with your black coffee. And factoring in the occasional day-of trip to the market will make it feel less like a last-minute dash and more like a successful trip spent scoring the freshest produce possible.