Boogers on the Wall

Hate grocery shopping? Then I may have found your new favorite free online tool: Walmart Grocery.

I hate grocery shopping. I have lamented about it a couple of times on my blog.

From nearly running over my own kids when they dangle from the side of the kiddie car carts, to watching my 3-year-old hit every single elderly person who shares the same aisle as us to running to get all the food our family – between scouts, baseball practice, PTA meetings and nap time – it’s never easy. It’s never convenient. And it’s never over. Inevitably I’ll get home and realize I forgot one, maybe two and sometimes even three or four things on our list.

So when I got an email last week for $20 off at Walmart Grocery, I was sold. It was payday anyway and I needed to go shopping.

I made my list like I normally do. I planned on how many dinner meals we’d need in the next two weeks, made of list of food for those meals, wrote down the things we needed to restock our food storage and then added the usual staples – milk, toilet paper, diapers, etc.

Then I logged onto www.walmart.grocery.com

I plugged in my area code to see what stores offer the free pick-up service near me and then logged into my Walmart account.

Then I began my virtual shopping trip.

At first I used the blue drop-down menu and searched for items by category. But that was time consuming and tedious. So I started using the search tool bar at the top of the webpage. I’d enter the name of an item from my grocery list, select what size, brand or type I wanted, then add it to my cart.

It was magical.

I loved that I didn’t have to walk back and forth from aisle to aisle looking for the right brand, size or quantity of something. I love that I didn’t have to drag my kids along while wandering aimlessly for the one thing on my list I can never find.

I am a bargain shopper who claims that the same food resides in the Great Value boxes as it does the name brand ones so I love that I could choose value brands when shopping.

I love that I could see a running total of my trip (I never can seem to keep a tab in my mind while wandering through the store in person.)

I love that the service is free. Yes, FREE.

Anyone who has a participating store nearby can use the website to shop for their groceries. Once you submit and pay for your order you select a date and time when you want to pick it up. Then a Walmart employee will do all the legwork for you. They wander through the store finding all the things on your list. What if something is sold out? They substitute for a bigger version at the smaller cost.

About 15 minutes before I was to arrive at my pick-up store I called the pick-up number and told them I was on my way. Then I called again when I got there.

Less than a minute later an employee walked out pulling a cart loaded up with my groceries.

I felt like royalty.

She helped me load my goods into my car and I was on my way.

This is going to change my life.

I’m not saying I’m never going to go into Walmart or any other grocery store again – heaven knows I end up picking up extra things a few times a week sometimes. But for the big, pay-day I-need-enough-food-for-my-family-of-6-for-2-weeks trips I am going to use this service.

I’ve tried something similar with Sam’s Club. But it’s not nearly as convenient. If you order online and choose to pick up your stuff in the store, you still have to go inside, log in and head to a check out stand before you can get out of there. And they never have the ground turkey I like available for in-store pick-up.

Tired, crazy, stressed out moms are not the only ones I can see benefiting from the new Walmart Grocery program. This would be a huge help to anyone who is short on time or who may need help getting around a store.

There are a couple of drawbacks to Walmart Grocery. One is there is no way to price match. That’s something that I have done for years. I won’t be able to scour other ads and have Walmart match other stores’ extremely low prices.

Second, there’s no way to use coupons – for now at least. Another thing I have done for years.

But when it comes to convenience and timesaving versus a few dollars I could save with coupons, I’m going to go with the former. I can always head to Smith’s or Fresh Market with my coupons for one or two things if it’s a killer deal. (Or send my husband. Ha!)

When I was a little girl my mom used to drive an extra 10 minutes to shop at a store that would load all her groceries in the car for her when her shopping trip was done. I never understood that until now.

This is even better.