It’s not often that I see something in a store that makes my heart cry with unbridled, capitalist desire. Yes, both the wine and cheese departments sometimes get interesting, but apart from that, there are many ways to reconfigure the food canon.
However, it wasn’t the edibles that caught my eye, but the smart infrastructure. And it was packaged in bright colors, actually, but not in the processed food department or the produce area. I saw them in a fellow shopper’s cart: four technicolor shopping bagsone of them is enclosed, designed to fit inside a grocery cart, with top-hanging handles that keep it open and in place when shopping.
It’s easy. A genius. How did I not see that these things were missing in my life?
I saw these smart shopping bags in another shopper’s cart. I knew I had to have them.
The rainbow colors are definitely what caught my attention here, but when my mind processed what I saw, it was my type A heart that decided I had to have it. (I eagerly stopped the owner to ask if I could take a picture, as if we were a couple of puppies and not shopping bags.)
Of course for a highly organized, competitive person, sorting through one’s grocery shopping bags while showing the full aisles is about as fun as one can have in a grocery store without a Supermarket Sweep competition. (Spice rack, you fools! Go to the spice rack!)
Sorting groceries into shopping bags in real time is about as fun as one can have at the grocery store.
Bags designed for real-time grocery cart organization
There are plenty of reusable grocery shopping bags that are sturdy enough to fit inside your cart, but to maximize space and organization, look for those called “cart bags,” “cart caddies” or “trolley bags,” which also offer the added bonus of making grocery shopping feel like a fun outing rather than a weekly chore.
There are many bag designs to choose from.
There are many designs and layouts here to choose from: Some have retractable stroller handles, others have separate, removable clips, and others are equipped with dowels that hang from the sides of the stroller, then are stored in what looks like a tent roll. (Again, adventure, not tedium.) Not all sets come with an insulated bag, and some brands have bags of the same color. (Presumably so as not to attract the attention of people like me who treat grocery shopping as a fact-finding mission.)
It’s up to you to choose from a variety of options, but here are a few sets available on Amazon, around the $30 to $40 range:
Sort as you shop
These bags bring order to the chaos when grocery shopping.
Maybe your kitchen pantry, like mine, isn’t exactly designed with grocery layouts. Items that sit together on retail shelves often sit in opposite rooms in real life. “Snack items,” for example, are relegated to various shelves in my kitchen based on factors I’m not sure you can divulge here.
Maybe you get a sniff about cleaning products sharing bag space, or cart space, with new products. Maybe you have a lot to do when you’re grocery shopping, and you’re wondering about the condition of your frozen or frozen items when you leave the store. These bags create order for all this potential chaos, real or imagined.
I use colored bags in dedicated sections.
The real beauty of these bags is that you can plan your meals in real time, according to any plan that makes sense to you. (See “snacks,” above.) This is also the opposite of multi-colored bags, which allow you to assign groceries to their respective bags, saving you time in the checkout section of grocery shopping.
I’m sure I don’t need to mention that these are also eco-friendly, if you’re not into the reusable grocery bag game. A dedicated, airtight bag for all your fruit can prevent the need to wrestle with an awkward aisle bag roll. Safe in their color-coded environment, your lettuce and broccoli crowns won’t come into contact with anything you don’t want them to touch.
Use with on-the-go scanning apps for maximum efficiency
Combine these smart bags with scan-to-checkout purchases for the most efficient trip to the supermarket.
Checking and repacking your groceries makes a lot more sense when everything is already sorted in a uniform format. I realize these are like mere minutes of your life, but for most of us, those minutes add up, not even in a lifetime but in the course of a day, and a little sanity can go a long way in turbulent times.
If your grocery store has an app or device that allows you to scan on the go, now you’re in for a more efficient grocery store. Like TSA Pre-check, except for the kind of special grocery shoppers who would never double park their cart in a high-traffic area. Those systems, which even prevent the need to check in any time-consuming way, and have your groceries pre-sorted in these bags, reach almost the pinnacle of what grocery shopping in person would desire.
