It’s rare that I spot something at the grocery store that makes my heart cry out with unbridled, capitalistic desire. Yes, both the wine and fancy cheese departments sometimes have fun finds, but otherwise, there are only so many ways to remix the foodstuff canon.
It wasn’t something edible that recently caught my eye, though, but rather a genius bit of infrastructure. And it was brightly colored packaging, in fact, but not in the processed-food department or the produce aisle. I spotted them in a fellow shopper’s cart: four technicolor shopping bags, one of them insulated, designed to fit inside the grocery cart, with overhanging handles that keep them open and in place while you shop.
Simple. Genius. How did I not realize that these were missing in my life?
The rainbow colors are certainly what grabbed my attention here, but once my brain processed what I was seeing, it was my type-A heart that decided I must have them. (I enthusiastically stopped the owner to ask if I could take a picture, as though they were a quartet of puppies and not shopping bags.)
Surely for a highly organized, competitive personality, efficiently sorting one’s grocery purchases into their shopping bags while parading the well-stocked aisles is about as much fun as one can have in the grocery store outside of contestantship on Supermarket Sweep. (The spice rack, you fools! Go to the spice rack!)
Bags designed for grocery cart organization in real time
There are plenty of reusable grocery shopping bags that are sturdy enough to situate inside your cart, but to maximize space and organization, look for those called “cart bags,” “cart caddies” or “trolley bags,” which also offer the added bonus of making grocery shopping sound like a fun outing more than a weekly chore.
There are numerous designs and layouts here to choose from: Some have clip-on cart handles that retract, some have separate, removable clips, and others are outfitted with dowels that overhang the sides of the cart, which are then stored in what looks rather like a tent roll. (Again, adventure, not tedium.) Not every set comes with an insulated bag, and some brands feature bags that are all the same color. (Presumably so you don’t attract the attention of people like me who treat the grocery store like a fact-finding mission.)
You do you with regard to these various options, but here are several sets available on Amazon, all around the $30 to $40 range:
Sort as you shop
Perhaps your kitchen pantry, like mine, isn’t exactly designed with grocery aisle layouts in mind. Things that sit side by side on retail shelves often live in opposite corners in real life. “Snacks,” for example, are relegated to various shelves in my kitchen based on factors that I don’t know you well enough to divulge here.
Perhaps you get sniffy about cleaning products sharing bag space, or even cart space, with fresh produce. Perhaps you have numerous errands to run when you grocery shop, and you’re wondering about the condition of your refrigerated or frozen items once you leave the store. These bags create order for all of this potential chaos, real or imagined.
The real beauty of these bags is that you can sort your groceries in real time, according to whatever system makes sense to you. (See “snacks,” above.) This is also the argument for multi-colored bags, which let you assign groceries to their appropriate bags, saving you time at the putting-away stage of grocery acquisition.
I’m sure I don’t need to mention that these are also environment-positive, if you’re not already in the reusable grocery bag game. A dedicated, ventilated bag for all your produce may even preclude the need to wrestle with the uncooperative produce aisle bag roll. Safe in their own color-coordinated zone, your lettuces and broccoli crowns won’t mingle with anything you don’t want them to touch.
Use with scan-as-you-go apps for extreme efficiency
Checking out and repacking your groceries becomes that much more sane when everything is already sorted in a like-with-like format. I realize this only amounts to mere minutes of your life, but for many of us, those minutes add up, not even over the course of a lifetime but in the course of a day, and a little bit of extra sanity can go a very long way in turbulent times.
If your grocery store has an app or device that allows you to scan as you go, now you’re really in a high-efficiency grocery zone. Like TSA Pre-check, except for the kind of elite grocery shoppers who would never double-park their cart in a high-traffic aisle. Those programs, which preclude even the need for checking out in any time-sucking sense, plus your pre-sorted groceries in these bags, amount to just about the pinnacle of what in-person grocery shopping can aspire to.
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