My neighbor's comment about my grocery cart made me rethink everything

Last Tuesday I was unloading my cart at the checkout in Kroger and my neighbor Linda walked by. She glanced at my cart and said "you sure buy a lot of single serve stuff." It hit different because she wasn't being mean, she was just noticing. I looked down and realized I had like 8 yogurt cups, 6 individual bags of chips, and 4 single serving applesauce pouches for my kid. That stuff adds up quick. I did the math later and I was spending about $35 a week more on individual packages versus buying family size and portioning it myself. Now I buy the big tub of yogurt and use little containers I saved from takeout. The savings is around $140 a month which is huge for us. Has anyone else had that moment where someone just pointed out something obvious you were missing?

3 comments

3 Comments

smith.anna1mo ago

The single packs also create way more plastic waste for the landfills too.

emery_black1mo agoMost Upvoted

@smith.anna my cousin used to save the plastic packaging and make wallets out of it, weird but kind of worked.

tylerpark1mo ago

I was one of those people who thought the single packs were fine. I figured, you know, it's a few extra wrappers, no big deal. Then I actually saw a photo of a beach cleanup where they had over a thousand single-serve wrappers from just one small stretch of sand. That kind of hit me. Now I just buy the big jar of protein powder and use a reusable shaker. Seems obvious now but I really didn't think about it before.