Carless Shopping Trip #1

This evening we went on our first carless shopping trip. Last week I asked a friend to borrow their bike lock so I could go to the store and she told me to just take her car, I did think about refusing just so I could say I did it, but I just couldn't turn down the offer. We have been picking up a few things at the BYU Creamery, which is on our way back from campus, but tonight all three of us walked to Day's Market. Day's is just about 2 miles from our apartment. We brought a couple re-bags, a large backpack, some water and the stroller. It took us about 30-35 minutes to walk to the store, getting our groceries was a little more difficult than normal because we tried to just use the stroller as our cart, but Jackson was getting a little upset about us putting things in his stroller. Justin ended up taking him out of the stroller and looking for bread while I finished getting a few other things. Checkout was pretty fun and I think the cashier thought we were nuts because we asked her not to bag anything and to just put it all in a cart and we would bag it ourselves. We wanted to make sure we maximized the space that we had. We were able to fit all of our goods into the stroller and backpack with no problem at all! Justin pushed the stroller and I carried the backpack.

Here is the run down of what we were able to get:
2 gallons of milk
2-1/2 gallon jugs of juice
tortillas
bread
english muffins
saltine crackers
peanut butter
lunch meat (we brought a small insulated lunch box to carry home any cold items so they
wouldn't go bad on the walk home)
eggs (and not a single one broke!)
an artichoke
2.5 lbs of bananas
0.8 lbs of beets
1 lb of broccoli
2 lbs carrots
2 lbs cauliflower
1.7 lbs peaches
1.2 lbs plums
1 lb potatoes
1 lb yellow squash
2 cucumbers
bag of spinach
1 lb of strawberries
large thing of dish soap

We put all the liquids (milk/juice) in the bottom of the stroller, all the produce in the backpack and put the rest of the things in a rebag and set them on top of the liquids. There was a snow-cone place in the parking lot of the grocery store so we shared a snow-cone as we walked home. It was actually a pretty fun trip!

There were obviously a few cons. First it was about 4 miles round trip and although it wasn't bad while we were walking my feet were a little sore when we got home. Nothing that a little foot rub from my hubby could cure ;). It only took us 2 hours to walk to the store, shop and walk home, which I was quite surprised about because that's about as long as I took shopping before.

Also, I will admit that our bread got a little smashed during the trip, but it unsmashed (is that a word..?) as we let it sit on the counter. I was a little nervous that we bought too many things, but we didn't have any problems carrying the groceries back. All in all it was a very successful trip! We had such a good time that I think we've decided to make it a family ritual on Saturday nights. I'll continue to shop at the BYU Creamery for milk or other various things that we need during the week, but I'm happy to report big time grocery shopping can be done without a car!