SHOPPING LISTS FOR FOOD SHOPPING AND LOST OUR ELECTRICITY - AND YES, THEY ARE RELATED

Another month gone already? Hard to believe.

Early in the pandemic we had been going out food shopping about every 2 months – takes a lot of planning to manage to do that.  More recently we have been doing so every 3 weeks.  

Why every 3 weeks?  We have been treating ourselves to a frozen entree meal on Sunday nights.  I can fit 4 of them in our SMALL spare freezer which is in our basement with everything else which needs to fit in it. So to be sure that we do not run out we shop – and refill on these dinners – every 3 weeks, buying 3 new ones to add to the one left in the freezer.  

I have come up with a good way to organize what we need to buy.  On one of early trips to this supermarket I wrote on the back of my shopping list which items – that we use – were in each aisle.  My aisle one is the first one we go to when shopping – NOT the aisle they have marked as Aisle 1.  The store is a Walmart “Neighborhood Market” - a supermarket and pharmacy with related items only.  Our regular Walmart stores are relatively small compared to those elsewhere (even the one Supermarket seems unusually small to me) and only have small food sections.  

I keep track of items on which we are running low or otherwise need to buy in a memo app in my cell phone.  

I then set up a worksheet in Excel to use for my shopping list.  I have a list by aisle number (my numbering system as mentioned above) on the right side of the worksheet of items in each aisle – by category.  In the middle of the worksheet I have a master list of things we buy – again listed by aisle.  A night or so before we will be going shopping I go through the list in my cell phone and add it to the left side of the worksheet – again by aisle number.  I then do a quick look through of the items in our small pantry closet in the kitchen and the items which are being stored on my work tablet in our studio (one day I will actually be able to use the work table again) and see what we need to buy – or might want to buy as something different.  The night before we are going shopping husband and I sit and I run the through the list with him while we have our late night snack (our 3rd meal of the day).  He might say he no longer wants a food that we are low on or that he wants to make something different for dinner, or that he wants to add something to the list.  When we are done I print out the list (actually I copy it to Notepad and then to a 2 column file in Libreoffice so it is a shorter,  2 column list and easier to deal with in the store).  

Our state made it illegal (just as the pandemic was starting by coincidence) for stores to hand out plastic bags and depending on where in the state one lives (by county/ major city) either one is charged a fee per paper bag which goes to the state or if one's county/major city has not passed such a law, the stores may charge for paper bags (and of course for heavier reusable plastic bags).  Over the decades I have done something which organizing books (and my husband) say not to do – I have saved bags – paper and plastic – and we have used them for various purposes when needed – including our hand crafted business (though can no longer use for same) at craft shows.  I figure we have close to a lifetime's amount of bags to use.  If we are going in a store casually – no list, only looking for a few items, I fold up the plastic bags (the “one time use ones”) and put them in the back pockets of my jeans – remember, I don't carry a purse or pocketbook – I can fit up to 3 bags in each of the pockets depending on the weight of the bag material.  When we are going in for one of the major food shopping trips I have paper bags – kept doubled – in the back of our vehicles to take in and use.  Generally 4 of these doubled bags is what we need for the 3 week shopping trips.  

So last night we went over the list I had made, added a couple of things, removed a couple of things – and printed it out.  Ready to go today!

Of course life loves playing jokes on people (sometimes it seems especially on us).  Husband woke up early this morning as he was so terribly warm – he got out of bed to turn the air conditioner colder – no lights on the air conditioner, clock not lit up – electricity was out!   So he did what he does whenever there is a problem and I am sleeping – he woke me up in a panic.  I tried to telephone our electric company  - but could not find them in my current or old cell phone in the address books – I started to panic and was about to go across the hall to our home office for the most recent bill – when husband mentioned their name – duh moment! - I was looking for their old name.  Call made to electric company and back to sleep – sort of, but not really as he was terribly nervous about the outage.  We have an ongoing problem – a transformer on the nearby utility pole blows and shuts off.  It makes a loud noise and generally the noise will wake me up and we know what happened – don't know it may have been same or not this time.  (One time this transformer blew 3 times within a week.)

In just about an hour I heard everything click on and we had our electricity back.  Then husband started to panic over whether or not food had gone back in the refrigerator or freezer.  I told him that I had not fallen asleep until after 6 am – not unusual for me – so the electricity had been off for less than 3 hours.  Later he checked the thermometer we keep in the fridge – it is a remoter read and the highest temperature in the past 24 hours was okay.  

So we got dressed, went out to Wendys for lunch and off to food shop.  Many food items still not in stock – we were able to buy frozen carrots for only the second time in months – and finally full sized bags of same were available.  Well, at least now we are stocked for another 3 weeks – though we will do some filling in at one of the regular Walmarts near us as needed for bread and such I between – and the outage was short and not AFTER we filled the freezer and refrigerator.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Make sure you can easily find the contact information for your utility companies in case they are needed in an emergency.  After we came home and unpacked I went into my cell phone (and my old cell which I use a PDA also) and put in a fictitious phone listing with the old name of our electric utility – it has the old name and a note of the correct one, so next time there is an emergency and I forgot the name changed – I will see the correct one to contact when I look up the old one.  Trust me – it will prevent a lot of panic in the years to come.