Use It Up

Each Wednesday or Thursday, the mail carrier delivers a small packet of weekly sales fliers from the regional supermarkets.  I intercept the Shop-Rite ad from the group, then over the next day or so, go through it a few pages at a time, noting the coupons, looking at what discounts generated thoughtful meal planning, then on a writing pad, in two columns, designate what I will definitely buy and what I might consider buying.  On Sundays, the coupons go electronic.  I download what I might consider onto my electronic bar-coded customer plastic for swiping at the register.  Then, based on how badly I need to go there for essentials, decide what day to do the major weekly resupply of groceries.

Thanksgiving week created a disruption to the usual pattern.  No postal delivery of supermarket inducements this week.  People must have been exhausted from their supermarket preparations.  The pre-Thanksgiving ad had a few must go back there with some coupons limited to the Friday and Saturday after the holiday, with minimum purchases needed to get the major discounts.  I had trouble reaching this threshold, but came home with the big box of half-price k-cups that captured my attention.

That's not to say the Shop-Rite promotional staff took a week off.  They still created what appeared to be their usual weekly display, but spared the landfills and recycling bins a bit by leaving it for online access.  I read it, finding it harder to do electronically than on paper.  As I went along, I entered my two columns.  Only three items on the must:   Discounted cereal, raspberries, and frozen vegetable.  Since I will be traveling in ten days and have enough of each of these things already in possession, my must list is really zero.  Having cancelled Thanksgiving dinner due to wife's covid, I already have unprepared menus, with a little catch up intended for my wife's birthday which occurs a few days before we depart for vacation.  No reason at all to go to Shop-Rite unless some essential gets used up before we go.