plan your meals, make your grocery list

I have tried a million different versions of this over the years, and here's what's working for me currently.

I use my notes app on my phone to write out our meals for the week. I don't assign what days we eat what, I just make sure I have about 4-5 meals planned. These meals are relatively simple: taco salad, spaghetti squash and meat sauce, rice bowls with baked salmon and cucumber salad, roasted chicken and salad, etc. I use rec league to save my favorite recipes for when I need a reminder of what is easy and good on a weeknight.

Then most of the time, I order my groceries from Whole Foods because it's so easy to program them in when I have time, schedule the order for pickup or delivery the next day, and then be done with it. One caveat, I do get a CSA box as well, so I usually don't need to buy a ton of produce and I don't have to worry about whether the person shopping for me is good at buying produce or not.

I will usually do a second grocery run throughout the week to grab a few things for the weekend, extra snacks, flowers. etc.