I Make This Mistake Almost Every Time I Go Grocery Shopping, and It Costs Me Hundreds per Year

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A writer owns up to a big blunder she makes with food shopping. Read on to see how she’s addressing it. 

Years ago, my husband and I made the decision to spring for a second fridge. We found that a single fridge made things tight given our family of five, and also, we were constantly running out of room every time we were scheduled to host a party or holiday gathering.

I don’t remember how much we spent on that second fridge, but I remember getting it on sale and therefore not racking up a massive credit card tab in the process. And since setting up that fridge in our basement, it’s been easier to do our food shopping, especially because we tend to shop at Costco on a weekly basis. That second fridge allows us to store our perishable Costco hauls with ease, and it also saves us trips to the store.

Case in point: My family can go through up to three gallons of milk per week, and buying our milk at Costco saves us money. But there’s no way we have room for more than one gallon at a time in our main fridge. Thanks to our second fridge, we can buy extra milk when we go to Costco without having to worry about there being enough space.

But while my second fridge has certainly come in handy through the years, there’s one pitfall I’ve run into. And it’s probably cost me hundreds of dollars on a yearly basis.

When you don’t actually check the second fridge

I’ve gotten into the habit of giving my main fridge a quick look before hitting the supermarket to make sure I’m not buying things we already have. But even though my basement really isn’t all that far away (I mean, it’s a short flight of stairs, nothing more), somehow, I constantly find myself forgetting to check my second fridge before running out to the store.

In fact, it would be fair to call it a mental block more so than laziness. I usually walk/run five miles a day or more, so I can swing the 10-foot walk down to the basement. But for some reason, I’m always forgetting to check that fridge, and as a result, I frequently buy things I’m convinced we’re out of when, in fact, we’re not.

A solution is in the works

When I say I waste a few hundred dollars a year on duplicate grocery purchases, I’m perhaps being a little hard on myself. It’s more that I spend a few hundred dollars extra on groceries we technically don’t need, but once I realize my mistake, my family makes an effort to consume that food. So most of the time, it doesn’t actually go to waste.

In fact, Americans waste an astounding 120 billion pounds of food every year, according to Recycle Track Systems. I really don’t want to add to that problem, so sometimes, we’ll pivot accordingly when I’ve bought something needless, such as having pancakes for dinner.

But still, I’d rather break this habit. And since my brain can’t seem to comprehend the notion of walking downstairs before running off to the store, my husband has begun to implement a solution.

Not so long ago, he created a shared list I have access to on my phone of the items in our second fridge. So now, for those times when I arrive at the supermarket and realize “d’oh, I forgot to check the fridge again,” I can instead just pull up that list on my phone and make sure I’m not buying anything on it.

Of course, this system will only work well if my husband regularly updates that list. And to be fair, I should help out there, too.

The point, however, is that it’s silly of me to spend extra money on food we already have. And since I seem to have this mental block that prevents me from checking our second fridge, this seems like the next best solution.

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The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.Maurie Backman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Costco Wholesale. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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