“I always make a list before I go to the grocery store. Sometimes I even remember to bring it with me.”

That’s one of my favorite ecards from someecards.com. So let me tell you how I make my weekly trip to the grocery store a lot easier. But first a little personal experience.

A few years after we married, I was visiting with a lady from church that had four boys. We only had two kids at the time. We got on the topic of meals and she said, “One morning I woke up and realized that I’m responsible to feed these kids at least three meals EVERYDAY, for how many years?!?!?”

Big responsibility if you think about it that way.

At the time, I thought it was just kind of funny, but over the years it has stuck with me and with each additional kid, her statement hits me harder.

As my kids have grown and I have to worry about three meals a day for six kids now instead of just two, along with all the rest of my motherly responsibilities, sometimes I find myself overwhelmed by that reality.

Planning one meal can be difficult, and pleasing six hungry children is next to impossible. Now try to do that every single day for who knows how many years. It’s daunting and for me, it can be quite stressful.

I’ll be honest. I really don’t look forward to going to the grocery store. In fact, it’s actually one of the chores I dislike the most. My grocery day is Friday and every Thursday night it hits me: “Tomorrow is grocery day.” Ugh!

Fortunately, there are some things that can make this task much easier; namely, meal planning and grocery shopping with a very detailed list. These two things have made my life so much easier.

I used to actually plan meals for the whole month when I first started. However, a lot has changed and for us, it’s best to plan one week at a time now. Here’s why.

Dinner time!

First, our family’s schedule is so much busier than it used to be so we often have to plan our meals around our schedule. And I’m not talking about what time we eat. I’m actually referring to what we eat. Some meals are easier to prepare or eat on the go, or in shifts, than others.

The other problem I deal with, as I mentioned earlier, is that it’s impossible to please everyone. They all have an opinion and they never hesitate to voice it. Every day it seems at least one family member is not happy with my meal choice.

I have handed over some of the burden of this chore to the kids by actually having them fill out the weekly dinner calendar. It’s actually helped them appreciate what I do a little more.

Anyways, after making the dinner menu and grocery list each Thursday night, I head out early Friday morning to shop – with my grocery bags in hand (I save $.06 for each bag I use). I drop my two oldest off at an early morning church class and then head to the store.

There are two reasons I like going early in the morning. Number one, it’s easier to find everything on my list, because the store is typically freshly stocked.

And number two; the traffic inside the store is more like a freeway in Montana than one in California. It’s so much easier to maneuver around the store at 7:30 am.

Our list has changed a lot over the years as our family has grown and our tastes have changed. In fact, we just recently created yet another new grocery list and laminated it, and this is what I use each week to shop, along with a Vis-a-Vi marker. (This post contains affiliate links as noted in our Amazon Associates Disclosure in the right sidebar.)

It includes pretty much everything I buy and it’s divided into the different sections of the store where the items are located: produce, deli, middle section, dairy, etc.

After my menu is set for the week (click here for meal planning post). I basically go through each meal’s ingredients and check anything on the list we need to buy. Then, I run through the entire list and check all the standard weekly items we need. Click here to see how my list is set up.

So, while shopping for groceries is definitely not my favorite chore, having a weekly meal plan and this detailed list with me every week, does make it a whole lot easier…as long as I remember to bring it.