How To Do The Big Shop

Over the weekend the Algorithm saw fit to inflict on me several instances of an awful video by an influencer (female) complaining about another awful video by an influencer (male) talking about doing the Big Shop. I'm reasonably sure that the latter of these was either a parody, or perhaps someone advocating for deploying weaponized incompetence, while the former was a rant about the horrors of the mental load.

Anyway, as someone who is well-versed in the arts of the Big Shop, I thought I'd offer my advice.

Step One: Plan the Meals

The first step in the Big Shop is actually nothing to do with shopping, and is instead a matter of deciding what you're going to eat in the time covered by said Big Shop (in our case, that's the next week, but your timing may vary). This includes four things: breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks of various sorts.

(I should note at this point that for us three of those are pretty straightforward - we maintain supplies of some staples for breakfasts, lunches, and snacks, and add only a few "specials"; that is, maybe a different breakfast for one weekend morning, or something for a lunch, or whatever. The only thing I really need to note is which days I need to make sandwiches for packed lunches.)

By and large, the person who is going to actually do the cooking should take the lead on this. Ideally, they should review their choices with the others in the household, just in case everyone is sick of pizza every night.

Step Two: Prepare the List

Now that you have the meals decided, the next step is to prepare the list for the Big Shop. Mostly, this involves working around the key rooms in the house and seeing what's coming to an end: if you're on your last tube of toothpaste, add that to the list; if you have plenty of mouthwash, maybe skip it this week. And so on and so forth.

I generally start upstairs with the bathrooms, then work through the cleaning products downstairs, and then add foodstuffs last. When it comes to the meals decided on in the previous step, dig out the list of ingredients, check what you have, and add anything you're missing.

Once complete, double-check the list. Then it's quite important to review it with others: firstly, with the person who is doing the cooking (as above), in case there's some implied accompaniment you've forgotten, and also with the other adults in the house. That extra check is definitely worthwhile: there's a good chance you've forgotten something, and there are potentially other things that need bought that you might not know about (I don't, for example, keep track of when LC is going to run out of shampoo and conditioner).

This is also the time for people to express any key preferences that they have: if there's a particular brand of toilet paper that they simply have to have, or they would like green apples instead of red this week, or whatever else, now is the time to say! (And if you're not going to be able to remember, write these preferences on the list!)

Quite important: The person who is actually going to do the Big Shop should also be the person who takes the lead on putting together the list. (Just as the person who does the cooking should usually be the person who cleans up afterwards...) That feels counter-intuitive, as people naturally want to split the labour, and this seems like a good place, but trust me on this one - as I mentioned above, there's a good chance you've forgotten something, and there's also a good chance that the review won't catch it. But there's a decent chance that you'll see the item when going around the shop and realize you need it... and that only works if you were the person who made the list.

(The reason for the cooking/clean-up thing is that it encourages efficiency - if you know you're going to have to do the clean-up, this provides incentive to only use those utensils you actually need and to clean as you go. Lacking that incentive the "occasional cook" is likely to leave a disaster area.)

Optional: Reordering the List

Having done the Big Shop a few times you should have the layout of the store memorised. So take a few minutes to rewrite the list in the order in which you'll find them in the shop. Especially if you have the list in an electronic format, this will save a disproportionate amount of time in the shop.

(That said, there's an even higher level of mastery where you transcend the need to do even that, and can simply mentally reorder the list as you go.)

Step Three: Shop

So, you've made a list, you've checked it twice, and so it's time to go to the shop.

This is actually the easiest bit of the job: go, put the things in the trolley, check you've got everything from each zone before you move to the next (to minimise backtracking), and once you've got everything, you're done.

Now, here's the bit that those two awful influencers got themselves in a mess with: supermarkets have a wide range of products, so how do you decide which of the dozen types of apples is the right one, or which of the fifty bottles of fabric softener is just right?

Here's the answer: either at the review at the end of Step Two, or perhaps at some time in the past, a strong preference may have been expressed on exactly what is wanted - as noted, it may be green apples this week; it may always be crunchy peanut butter instead of smooth. If so, that's the thing to get.

If there is no expressed preference, or said preference can't be fulfilled (because they don't have crunchy peanut butter), the person doing the Big Shop makes the choice. That may mean getting an alternative (a small jar of smooth peanut butter, or the store's own brand instead of the "good stuff", or whatever), or it might mean not getting anything ('cos you'll manage without, or pick it up somewhere else later).

Step Four: Take it Home

Once you've got all the stuff, paid for it, and packed it, it's time to take it home. You then get the joys of unpacking and putting it away. All of which is pretty easy: it's just work.

Responsibility of the Other Person

Where it seemed to go wrong for both of our awful influencers was a set of unreasonable expectations: on the one hand, the male influencer was apparently heading to the shop with a list, but also with a knowledge that his partner expected each and every item to be exactly the preferred one, necessitating a constant cycle of phoning home to check every decision. Meanwhile, the female influencer was complaining that their partner didn't have that exact list of preferences memorised - she objected to the mental load of having to maintain that knowledge.

Which, in both cases, is fairly idiotic.

In a sensible environment, here's how it works: where there are a reasonably small number of Important Preferences, the person doing the shopping should be able to memorise and apply those. Or, failing that, get them written down somewhere so they can be checked. If you partner hates Chardonnay, it's reasonable to expect that you'll know that and shop accordingly (I make no comment on how reasonable, or otherwise, that preference is - people are allowed to like or dislike things).

Beyond that reasonably small number of known preferences, it needs to not matter - if the choice of diluting juice isn't one of the Important Preferences, then when faced with the choice between "Summer Fruits" and "Apple & Blackcurrant" the person doing the shop should just make a choice (because it doesn't matter), and when they get back that choice shouldn't even warrant a comment (because it doesn't matter). Chances are the difference won't even be noticed.

However... If it is actually the case that one person have a large set of Important Preferences (because they must have green apples, and they must have "Apple & Blackcurrant" juice, and they must have a particular type of cheese, and and and...) then the solution is this: that person must be the one to do the Big Shop.

In short, then, the main responsibilities of the person who is not doing the job are to clearly express their Important Preferences beforehand, and then afterwards to accept that the person who is doing the job will then act independently on everything else.

(And, incidentally, that applies to just about everything else. The way I pack the dishwasher won't be exactly the same as the way you pack the dishwasher. Or batch clothes up for the washing machine, or wash the car, or whatever else the task is. But as long as the job gets done, the finer detail over preference doesn't really matter... and indeed needs to not matter. If for some reason it does really matter to one or the other, then that person needs to be the one doing that job.)

Two Last Notes:

1. I feel the need to reiterate that this post is entirely motivated by the two awful videos I referenced at the outset. Funnily enough, we more or less manage to get the Big Shop done without LC and I passive-aggressively sniping at one another. (Basically, I'm hoping that this will clear a bit of headspace that those videos have been filling over the past couple of days.)
2. Yes, pretty much everything here is, or should be, the bleeding obvious. I do hope that at least one of those videos was intended as a joke, because I'm increasingly finding myself wondering how supposed adults actually manage to get through the day.