How to Bring Home the Groceries Without a Car

There are two times when not having a car can be a real pain. One is when the buses or trains don’t go to where you want to go when you want to go. The other is when you’re trying to haul groceries and other stuff home from the shopping center. Both those times are why we’ll often choose to rent a car.

Now, we can and do fetch groceries without the car. There being only two of us humans, we don’t need huge amounts of food. And while we buy the dog food in 20-pound bags, we only need to buy it every other week. So, given the usual chaos of our lives, there are good odds we’ll be renting a car on the weekends we need to buy dog food.

Except for a few weekends ago. We had to replace some of our tech gear and the dogs needed food. And we’d decided against renting a car because of the cost. Did that stop us? As you can see from the photo to the left, of course not.

Even when the haul isn’t going to be this excessive, it does take some planning to grocery shop. I generally have to remember the granny cart or my other wheeled bag. Plus some extra bags. We like to try and include an insulated bag and some frozen packs since it does take longer to get the milk home.

And a good list is imperative. You really can’t just start tossing stuff in your cart willy-nilly because, at some point, you’re going to have to figure out how it’s all going to fit in what you have to carry. That may sound pretty obvious until you’ve actually gone and bought more stuff than you can carry. I’ve come pretty darned close, let me tell you. Having the granny cart with me is a big help because I use it as my regular shopping cart. That way, I know when I’ve got too much stuff.

Most times, only one of us will go out. As I noted above, we don’t generally need too much food at one time. But then there are those weeks when it helps to have two of us working together, like when we had the 20-pounds of dog food to buy, plus the extra tech gear, plus all the usual stuff we eat. We did it, as you can see. And it was kind of fun, too.