It used to be VERY common for him to look at a list of stuff we needed to get at Target/grocery store/whereever and go through it and say “Do we really need to get all this stuff? We only need toothpaste and milk right now, why do we need to get toilet paper and bread?”
I finally told him that he was REALLY asking was “Can we just get toothpaste and milk right now so we can get out of the store quickly and tomorrow when we’re out of bread and toilet paper YOU go to the store and get them?” He seemed to get it. At least he doesn’t ask me that anymore.
But he still makes comments about how I always spend $100 when I go to Target. And it’s true; I do. And you can just bet that I’m having the time of my life buying such luxuries as laundry soap and paper towels and prescriptions meds and pet supplies. Hoo boy, that’s just THE BEST! It’s SO MUCH FUN to pick out what paper towel design we’re going to get this month! And a new jug of laundry soap! I’m livin’ large now. :rolleyes:
I have tried using a hand-held basket instead of a cart to keep myself from buying too much crap. I end up lugging a really heavy basket around.
The only thing that actually works for me is to plan meals, and shop when I’m tired and just want to get out of there, or when I’m hurrying to get home before the traffic gets too bad.
I don’t take Mr. Neville to the grocery store with me when I’m tired or in a hurry, unless I have to. He wants to get a cart and systematically troll through every damn aisle. If he does come to the grocery store with me when I’m tired, I have to make it very clear to him that we are NOT going through every aisle, that we are going in to get one or two things and then leaving. He still wants to do it, even when I’ve told him several times that I am tired and so not in the mood to go down every aisle to try to figure out what else we might need. But we play against gender roles a fair bit.
I tried that with my husband. It took him close to an hour to “run in real quick, grab a gallon of milk, some butter, and a box of Betty Crocker Au Gratin potatoes” and it ended up costing almost 80 bucks and had everything BUT a gallon of milk, butter, and a box of Betty Crocker Au Gratin potatoes.
My husband swears he hates shopping but he’s the one who always wants to walk down one more aisle, just look that this one more thing or stop at one more store.
I prefer internet shopping or to get what I’m looking for and leave. There are some rare occasions when I’m in the mood to just browse around but I try not to torture others on those occasions.
That sounds about right for us, too, but at least my husband never comments on it. I’m not sure how that works since I’m only buying stuff we need, but it’s always around $100 every time I go to Wal-Mart.
And you probably have about six items in your cart.
You could never shop at Costco with just a hand-held cart either. Just ONE package of toilet paper, or soap, or anything requires a forklift to carry out to your car.
That’s me. Having done a couple of large projects last year, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been stood in the aisle at B&Q or Wickes eyeballing a selection of slightly different brackets or other fixtures, then confidently picking out the one I need and purchasing it… only to spend far more than the cost of the duplicate item in time and fuel by having to come back to the shop to buy a different one a couple of hours later.
Of course, when I try to second-guess this scenario, and think “Ah ha - I haven’t got Tool X that I’ll need later on, I’ll buy it now to save me a trip!” I invariably get home and find that I already have one, or possibly more, of said tool thanks to the last occasion I had the same thought. (I think my record is four try-squares, still in their original packaging, in my shed.)
