How Big a Cart?

Ever since a SuperTarget opened just a couple miles from Frozen North HQ, we've done nearly all our grocery shopping and regular household goods shopping there. This is a pretty chunk of our household budget.

For us, the Target visa card carries an intriguing reward system: for every $1,000 we spend at Target, we get a coupon good for 10% off anything we buy at Target on a single day. Limit one coupon per month.

It doesn't take a mathematical genius to figure out the optimal way to use this card: One trip a month of $1,111 would yield 10% savings on everything you buy.

As it happens, our monthly spending at Target (pre-card) was $600 to $800, sometimes jumping over $1,000.

Of course, some things have to be bought every week, like milk and other perishables. But with a big chest freezer, an astonishing variety of goods can be kept for a long time. So now we keep two grocery lists, one for stuff which must be bought on the next shopping trip, and another for stuff which can wait for the next 10% off coupon.

Yesterday was Coupon Day.

The goal on Coupon Day is to buy at least a month's worth of anything which we need and which can be stored for a month. If an item also happens to be on sale, that's a double bonus.

Among other things I bought yesterday:

• Ten loaves of bread (can be frozen)

• Twelve pounds of shredded cheese (ditto)

• Twenty cans of soup (lunches for She Who Puts Up with Me)--this happened to be on sale

• Three hundred sixty diapers

• A dozen cans of pineapple chunks (another sale item)

The big challenge was figuring out how to haul all this stuff through the store. Last month, I wound up making three separate trips (the coupon being good for a full day), but I was determined to be more efficient this time.

SuperTarget now has a few oversized carts. These are about 50% larger than the usual shopping cart, so I used that. Once I had filled that cart (including the shelf underneath--that's where the diapers went), I grabbed one of the baskets they have which can be hung off the front of the cart to increase its capacity.

A second basket went on the side of the cart. I could have added a third basket on the other side, but as it happens, I did not need it.

Fully loaded, this hybrid multi-basket cart combo probably weighed in at around 400 pounds, and it took over a half-hour to check out (it didn't help that I got Guy Slacker as my cashier). Our chest freezer is completely full.

But next week's shopping trip will consist of: Milk, Eggs, Fresh Fruit, Fresh Vegetables.