Aldi

I decided to put my guard down tonight and try something different: Elvis and I made our first shopping trip to Aldi's! I've heard good things and I've heard bad things so I finally decided to check it out for myself. I knew ahead of time that the carts cost so I made sure to have my quarter (stole it from Kennedy's piggy bank...I know, that's awful. But I couldn't find one anywhere! I mean, who carries cash these days!). I was actually kind of excited. I never thought in a million years I would be excited about a trip to the grocery store to possibly save some money. I remember in HS my Step-Mom wanted me to run to the dollar store to buy some cleaning products. We owned a cleaning business and she had ran out of something and was on a job. I was like, no way. There's no way I'm stepping foot into a dollar store. I would be totally mortified if anyone saw me. I argued and argued and I think I even ended up fronting some of my own money just so I didn't have to go. The thought of saving and bargain shopping didn't exist back then. Yes, I was a snooty little label whore. Anyway, so we made our way in...oh, and we didn't even need the quarter because a nice lady in the parking lot gave us her cart. I was surprised at how small the store was. I think there was a total of 4 isles stacked half high. I immediately started putting stuff in my cart. $0.49, $0.87, $0.99... heck yeah! I went in there just wanting to kind of check it out and get a few snacks for E and I ended up getting a full weeks worth of groceries for like $60. Score! They had awesome deals on their meat and dairy! I got 2 dozen eggs, milk, fish, breakfast sausage, bacon, smoked sausage, hot dogs, shrimp... not to mention sides and fixings for all of those for $60 freaking dollars! I couldn't believe it! I was totally impressed. Of course, the produce didn't have much of a selection and a lot of stuff was pretty limited (especially pasta & sauce choices), but that's okay. If I could just get the basics there and get everything else at Wal-Mart I would totally cut my grocery bill in half. So we finish up and go to check out and as we're checking out I glance over and see the person behind me has her stuff in boxes and there's another person that had just checked out bagging their stuff in their own bags and that's when I realized that there's no bags available. I was like, crap...what the heck am I going to do with all this. I ended up just stuffing everything in the floorboards in hopes that nothing would get squished or broken and when I got home I would just grab a box from the garage and load everything up. So we got home, I got a box...put it together and loaded everything up and as soon as I picked it up I realized it was heavy as hell and before I could even finish my thought everything fell out of the bottom. Ugh...I was so embarrassed (I live in an apt complex and there were multiple people outside watching me load my groceries that were strewn all over my car into a box and then that box breaking). So I went and got my good for the environment bags (which I should've brought w/me in the 1st place) and loaded eveything up and took everything upstairs and unloaded it. And that was my Aldi trip in a nutshell.