How To Be An Adult: The Grocery Store

I originally started this post for my tumblr, but it started to get exponentially long, so I've decided to make it a series on The Mothership. In the interests of full disclosure, I am twenty-two. I am a college student. I have a two year-old. I don't have a lot of extra money to bandy about. I know a lot of people have done posts where they talk about their process when grocery shopping, but I hope to provide my unique perspective as a college student with a full course load and a toddler. Hopefully some of my college friends will get something out of this and hopefully you will too. Maybe I'll even make How To Be An Adult into a regular thing beyond the grocery store.

Even though I'm still working out how to be an adult myself, what I do know well is the grocery store and how things work, so that's what I'm going to write about. This series will highlight upon a number of things, including how to plan your method of attack on the grocery store and the little extras I do because I dislike spending a lot of time there.

You can find a lot of blogs that talk about the grocery/couponing and while these are good places to start out (I highly encourage it, in fact, they probably know the intricacies a bit better than I do), a lot of them assume that you are not actually a struggling college student who possibly doesn't have the time to do in depth couponing what with your school and work and what have you. Luckily for you, I am a lot like you and I have the added bonus of having a toddler. Food is one of the most important things in life and if it isn't cheap, it's not happening.

I have the firm belief that with a little bit of planning, you don't have to do a lot of in depth couponing to save money. So over the next few days, I'm going to talk about making lists and taking stock of what you already have, kitchen short cuts that will save money, meal planning as a college student, how to attack the grocery store, grocery store etiquette, and the little extras that I do to make my time there more enjoyable. I hope you will find this series entertaining!