Episode 88 - Tip Tuesday - Stop Wasting Time with Grocery Orders & Shopping - Get Dinner on the Table with Less Stress & Struggle - Intentional Edit

When a former client went to the grocery store 5 times last week and was still missing a necessary item for lunch she realized she needed more help with creating a new system around grocery shopping. Solutions are needed for how to stop wasting so much time, plan better, and figure out how to use the time she is going to save with these new systems in place to make more meals at home and stop picking up dinner out most weeknights.

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Full Episode Transcription (not edited):

When a former client went to the grocery store five times last week and was still missing a necessary item to pack her kids’ lunch. She realized she needed more help with creating new systems around grocery shopping, how to stop wasting so much time plan better, or really be better prepared and figure out how to use the time. She’s going to save with these new systems in place to make more meals at home and stop constantly eating on the go and picking up dinner out. Most weeknights, Hey friends, quick tips that make a big impact in your daily life are my favorite ways to implement systems around the house. I’ve been sharing easy strategies and my go-to organizing products for tip Tuesday on the intentional at Instagram feed for a few years. Now I’m excited to bring it to the podcast with short episodes, answering your questions every Tuesday.

(00:47):

If you want me to answer your questions, go to the podcast page on intentional, edit.com and submit your questions there. Let’s get started on this tip Tuesday episode of the intentional edit podcast. Hey friends, thank you for joining me for episode 88. I cannot believe that it is almost October and we are fully into fall. If you are wanting to know how to get in touch with me, there’s a couple ways you can do that. One of them is to join our Facebook community. It’s a group just for intentional edit podcast listeners who are interested in all the things we talk about with home routines and systems, weekly schedules, time management, decluttering organizing all of that stuff. The Facebook group is easy to get to. You can just click on it in the podcast description, go to those show notes, click on the link. It will take you right there.

(01:35):

Be sure to answer the question. So I know you are a real person trying to join the group, and then you will be approved. It’s called declutter organized and create systems to simplify your home and life. It’s a group on Facebook. You can join us over there. Another great way to find me is on Instagram. Instagram is where I answer all of my DMS. So if you send me a message on Instagram or a comment on a post or a real or any of that, I will respond to you. It might take me a couple days to get back to your DM. Sometimes there’s a lot of them, but I will respond to you over there and we can connect that way. That’s at intentional edit. You can also find me on Pinterest and TikTok everywhere by searching intentional edit. And that is the account for all social PLA platforms.

(02:22):

So I would love to connect with you and be a solution and help you find solutions and solve your problems. When all of these things come up relating to decluttering and organizing and systems in your home and creating routines and how to analyze your schedule, get a schedule, audit, done all of that. Of course you can always book a coaching session with me where we can really get in and make a specific plan for you. But I would love to connect with you on social platforms, wherever you are. We can be connected and figure out a way to work together. Any of those, those ways are a great ways to connect. If you want me to answer a question that you have on a tip Tuesday episode, go to intentional, edit.com. A little button pops up. It says record. Now, all you have to do is push that button and you ask the question.

(03:13):

You don’t even have to type anything. You just ask the question like you are or leaving a voicemail for a friend. You might not even know what your question is, but you can press that record now button and just share your struggle. And if it is anything that has to do with something going on in your home, an area of your home, a room in your home, a time of day, where you are irritated and frustrated, click on that record. Now button that pops up when you go to intentional edit.com and tell me what the frustration is and just say like any solutions, any ideas, how can you help with this? And I will answer those questions or the comments that you leave. I will dedicate a tip Tuesday episode to that specific question where we can get into the specifics and the details and the plan for you to solve that problem and move forward to simplicity.

(04:01):

Let’s get on with the episode four today, today, we are talking about one area in the home or a area in life that has to happen all the time, over and over again. And it is revolving food. We have to eat, we need nutrition. We need to feed our bodies and our families. That means we have to grocery shop or place a grocery order. Go pick that up, get it for delivery, whatever it is that you do, it doesn’t matter whether you are placing an order or going into the grocery store. It still takes time. And one thing that keeps coming up when I am talking to friends, and when I’m talking to other moms or working in coaching sessions, or even on messages through Instagram, like I mentioned, there is a struggle since we are back into this busy season and things are back to normal, people are struggling again with food and weeknights and dinner.

(05:01):

When we’re running in all these different directions, what do we do about this? So I want to read you this email. When I checked in with a past client on some things that she was working on, and this was the response that came back, and I’m just gonna read you a chunk of it. I have to edit it a little bit, cause I’m gonna remove the names of her kids. We’re just gonna call those family, but let’s see, this is what it said. I’m now saving time in the morning. And the nighttime cleanup and pickups are huge. I didn’t realize the negative impact. The house in disarray was having on my mood, picking up and resetting has been a big help to my overall mood and how nice I am to my family. The things you suggested I change are making me realize where I waste time.

(05:46):

And last week was at the grocery store or target. I was there five times and still was missing something when packing lunches today. And we need to get better about eating dinner at home instead of on the go orders. I think I need to get another call with you for help with that. Any ideas, okay. There’s a lot there. First of all, systems, work, routines work, making little changes, dedicating five minutes here, 10 minutes there, adding a hook to so your backpack and your purse has a place to go adding a location. So your wallet and keys have a place in your home. All of these little things that seem insignificant are what makes life easier. These are the little things that we talk about in the simplified home masterclass. These are the ideas that I give you in coaching sessions. We have to figure out what is the problem and what is the solution?

(06:40):

So there’s little things here. And when I worked with her, the initial times, the clutter and not necessarily extra stuff, but just the things that are used on a regular basis, the lunchbox not having a spot and with a few kids with lunch boxes and stack bags and all of those things sitting on the counters, the kitchen tables being all over the backpacks, the shoes out constantly after school, the amount of stuff was adding to the clutter and she knew something was wrong. She knew she fell off. She was frustrated, but it was making her irritable. And I know so, so many of us can relate to that when our homes are not to a standard that we like, or they don’t feel picked up, or even if you feel like, oh, the clutter doesn’t bother me like a messy house, not a big deal.

(07:31):

Your house doesn’t have to be sparkling clean. Like it was just professionally cleaned all the time. That is not a realistic expectation, but having things have a home within your home and a place to be put away makes it so that you can feel good in your home. Your house has a status that is its baseline. And it can be kept at that. The majority of the time when you have good systems and routines. So we identified that we, we found her problems. We did a schedule audit. We figured out where some struggles were happening, what things were really irritating her and what we could do to put systems in place to fix that. When that happens, sometimes you identify other areas of struggle because the big ones usually stick out to you or the ones that are really irritating to you, stick out to you.

(08:26):

And then we move on to the next thing. We, I are able to identify those other things that are triggering us and making us annoyed and irritated and not very nice to our family. So the first step to getting what we want is getting rid of what we don’t. We don’t wanna waste time in this scenario. She does not want to waste time anymore. And how do you figure that out? You, you can do a schedule audit on yourself. You can do book a coaching session with me. I can help you with that. But she is identified. She is wasting time because in one week she has gone to target or the grocery store five times. That is a significant time waster. The problem is she’s stressed out. She’s irritable with her kids and her husband. She’s overwhelmed by the mess at home, the lack of systems to keep the house at that baseline.

(09:14):

We talked about and we are working to implement those few changes. A couple little things that I suggested for her to do that she has come up with now for new routines in her home are working. When you have a lot of things out of alignment and not working towards the priorities you have for your family, or you have this life that you envision, but it’s not what it currently is. You have to solve these problems one at a time, you have to break them down. So we conquered 1, 2, 3, a couple of those. She’s put these new systems in routines, into place, and now you it’s started to manage things. It’s the simplifying is beginning. The simplicity makes it easier to see these other problem areas. And that’s why the grocery shopping is now a problem. And it’s not just the grocery shopping. Why are we grocery shopping?

(10:05):

She needs food for dinner. She needs food for breakfast snacks to pack lunches, something isn’t working because she had to go five times in a week. We want, we bring simplicity in our lives to make things easier. And now that she’s done that in one area, she sees the time that’s wasted with the, on the go, eating, picking up the food and the grocery shopping, not to mention she’s wasting a ton of money with all these extra trips and a ton of time. I know what it’s like to have to run around to different grocery stores. If you have any dietary restrictions, allergies, things like that, you might have to go to different grocery stores. We’ve recently tried to pretty much eliminate seed oils from our diets. And even to find like the kind, the only kind of milk that we will drink, that is at one store.

(10:55):

There’s a couple things at that store. There’s other things that we love from trader Joe’s, but then there’s also the regular grocery shopping that we do. And then of course, some things it’s better to buy at Costco or the grocery store doesn’t have something, but Costco does. You know how that is? It’s hard to get everything all at one stop in terms of food. One stop shopping doesn’t happen for a lot of us, but we shouldn’t be going to these places a few times a week. How can we simplify? You need to have a plan to be efficient with this. And these things need to fit into your schedule, not become an extra thing, not become something else that you have to do. Another place that you have to go. When I was really struggling with this, and I was looking for a better way to make sure I was feeding my family food that had nutrition that was healthy.

(11:46):

That was good for us. And I wanted to eat at the dinner table together as many nights as we could as many nights as we were home together again with busy families, with activities and commitments in the evenings, that’s not going to happen. The whole family is not gonna be together every night. And you know that, and I didn’t wanna constantly be growing to the grocery store. I really don’t like to grocery shop grocery ordering can make that simple, but it still takes time. You still have to figure things out. I knew I had to come up with another way. And I’ve talked about this on previous episodes. That’s exactly what I did. I had to come up with a simple solution. I created a reusable meal plan, and now many years later I’ve been doing this for over eight years. A reusable meal plan was the answer to saving time, not going to the grocery store all the time, making sure that we were eating home cooked meals that were not taking a lot of time to prepare that, but that were still healthy and full of nutrition that we could eat together as often as possible.

(12:46):

It w the other benefits were of course saving money. And I didn’t even realize that that would be a benefit at the time when I was figuring this out, completely eliminating the stress around the thought or the conversation of what is for dinner. What am I cooking? What am I making? What groceries do I have that we can throw together a dinner? Because I created this reusable meal plan that I could use over and over. And I am eight years into this. I have taught so many people how to do this. It’s simple. It’s easy though. There’s now a meal planning course on intentional edit.com. If you want to do this, sign up for the meal planning course, it is super, super low cost. Inexpensive. You can get through it in one session, if you really, if you have a couple hours, but you can get through it quickly and create a meal plan.

(13:37):

By the end of it, you will have a two week reusable meal plan that only requires you to figure out your grocery list and your meals one time. And you can reuse that over and over and over again. So you don’t have to spend time meal planning anymore. This is truly the solution to this problem that she shared. She’s tackling her morning routine. She’s figuring out how to do these nightly resets and these little pickups and cleanups in the evening time. She’s dialed in so much of the day to day and the systems and routines and place baskets in her home, where things go and put hooks on the wall for her purse and backpacks and things that are going a big basket in her pantry for lunch boxes to go when they are not being used or waiting to be packed because they don’t belong on the table in the counter.

(14:30):

We’ve tackled all these things. And now she’s to the point where she can’t go to the grocery store, she needs to stop wasting money. She needs to stop wasting time going to the grocery store five times in a week is causing other problems. And you know how that feels when you’re constantly on the go and you need a little bit of downtime and you need to not be running ragged all the time. The answer to this problem also, because she mentioned that she doesn’t want to constantly be eating food from restaurants and picking up to go orders. Let’s come up with a meal plan. She needs to come up with a meal plan. So my suggestion for this would be sign up for the master meal planning course, it’s at intentional edit.com. You could click on the courses at the top of the page. There’s a dropdown, it says meal planning, sign up for it.

(15:18):

There’s a link in the podcast description. If you are struggling to get dinner on the table, if you desire to have dinner with your family in the evening, if you don’t wanna go grocery shopping all the time, the answers to all of that, the solution to all of those problems are in master meal planning, the mini course, super easy, super affordable. I would go sign up for it, complete the course, give yourself a couple hours and you will end up with a meal plan and a grocery list that you can reuse over and over and over again. It truly is that simple. It’s so easy. Go to intentional, edit.com/meal planning course, and you can get all of the details about it over there. I’m going to leave you with that. This episode’s getting a little long for a tip Tuesday episode. If you have a question for me, or want me to come up with a solution for some of your struggles, go to intentional, edit.com, click on that record.

(16:14):

Now button leave a message for me, whether it is a question or just explaining something that you are struggling with, that you think I can come up with a solution for, or would have an answer for. I would love to help you. And I will answer that on a future tip Tuesday episode, join me on all social platforms at intentional edit, of course, join our Facebook community. If you are on Facebook, the link to all those things is down below in the description. I am looking forward to connecting with you. I will meet you back here later into the week for the next episode of the intentional edit podcast.

(16:50):

That wraps up another quick episode of a tip Tuesday. If you want to be featured on intentional edits, tip Tuesday, go to intentional, edit.com, click on the podcast page in the menu bar, and then scroll all the way down to the bottom. You’ll find a button that says record, tap on that and record your question or share what is currently overwhelming to you. What is going on that you need help with? I want to know I needed to know your struggles so I can share actionable solutions to help you create simplicity in your home. If you are having this issue. I know other people are having it too, and we wanna help as many people as possible. Head over to the podcast page of intentional, edit.com and record your question for me there.

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Lauren is the founder of Intentional Edit, a home organization and lifestyle company focused on consciously editing to create efficient and organized spaces. Lauren believes that a functional home that looks and feels good has a positive influence on all aspects of life. Creating systems that allow for the home to function more efficiently, therefore, eliminating most of the clutter and chaos is her priority. While trends come and go organization is always in style!

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