Pondering Aerobic Grocery Shopping
By Lea Schneider, Professional Organizer

©2009 Professional Organizer Lea Schneider is the author of Growing Up Organized, A Mom-to-Mom Guide available at amazon.com. She provides one-on-one organizing advice via phone and email through Organize Online division at her company website, www.organizerightnow.com.

Her advice is featured here at What's Cooking America in a monthly column. You may have read her expert organizing ideas in Woman’s Day, Natural Health, College News, and Better Homes and Gardens Kids’ Rooms magazines and newspapers from across the country. She is a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers and the Association of Food Journalists.

Pondering Aerobic Grocery Shopping

Check out all of Lea Schneider's helpful home and kitchen columns at Organizing Kitchens, Pantries, Menus and Meals.

This spring, I am supposed to be on a plan to walk more often. The key word is “supposed.” When I return to the doctor for a three month recheck, he is sure to ask me how many times I have kept that promise to walk for 30-minutes, three times each week.

Some people walk outdoors. Others walk on treadmills. Still others go to the mall and do laps inside. I get my exercise at the grocery store. Do you think that counts?

On Sesame Street, Bert, or perhaps Ernie, sings to us about “Which of these things belong together?” If only we’d listen before grocery shopping.

Instead, back and forth then forth and back, we drag that shopping cart in search of the elusive item we missed. Then we take still another trip across the linoleum the size of two football fields for just one more item. Of course walking is good, but I don’t think that is what the doc had in mind for me.

Organizing the grocery list a bit better would certainly shorten the grocery shopping time. In this case, you really could have a heart energizing walk in the spring air instead of wasting it with a shopping cart, or as they say in back in Tennessee, a buggy.

To get your grocery list organized, think of Sesame Street. Place headings across the paper including fresh, frozen, meat, dairy, cleaning, pet and “other” for the miscellaneous items. As you examine your menu, add items under the appropriate headings.

If you want to take this organizing plan a step further, create a document on the computer with those headings. Under the headings, add items you buy over and over each week such as milk, bread, toilet paper and so on. This will help you remember the staples when you are at the store. Print out your list and add items from your menu to it.

Organizing gives you the time to do the things you really want to be doing….or in my case, I guess it means it gives me the time to do the things I know I need to do. Since my dog, Max, isn’t welcome to stroll in the grocery store with me, he is pretty happy to have me come home sooner to walk in the neighborhood.

She was frustrated by what I recognized as a couple of the most common organizing mistakes. The first is “failing to change” and the second is “not putting things where you really use them.”

As you move from wine glasses to sippee cups and back, be sure to rethink you kitchen storage - at least as often as you rethink your hair color.