A few months ago, I opened our fridge and found two dozen eggs and no milk. Turns out we’d both been to the store, and remembered we were out of eggs, but no one had checked the milk carton before making the trip. It was at this time that I told Tristan we needed a better system for managing this particular household chore. This is how the grocery card was born.
Around the same time, I read Eve Rodsky’s Fair Play. In it, she explains the system she’s devised to efficiently divide up household tasks. Each partner chooses their tasks, and is responsible for Conception, Planning, and Execution. By taking full ownership, one person assumes the entire mental load of making sure that card happens. Then the other partner can remove it from his or her “to do” list. Clearly, the week of the egg incident, we both executed and no one planned, so this sounded like something we could use.
Rodsky’s full system is fairly involved, there’s even an actual set of cards available for purchase. We didn’t take it that far, but the idea of dividing things up this way clicked for both of us. Tristan and I have lived together before, but in the years immediately before we got married, we lived apart while I was in grad school. After we got married, we moved into a larger apartment and suddenly the number of household chores felt never-ending.
We fell into a pattern of doing things whenever one of us had time, but this meant that we both had to remember everything. Had we bought groceries recently? Did the laundry need to be done? Did we pay the electric bill? What about renewing the car registration?
Often, I’ll ask Tristan to do something, and then nag him about making sure to vacuum under the couch, not just next to it. Or I’ll assign myself something, and run out of time to get to it, and suddenly neither of us has clean clothes. After reading Fair Play, we had a discussion specifically about grocery shopping and agreed that Tristan will hold the grocery card.
Pasta at my request, for my birthday, with hand crushed tomato sauce
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From the beginning, feeding ourselves has been weirdly stressful. Neither of us grew up loving to cook. I’m a baker, and Tristan would grill for every meal if he could. We finally convinced ourselves that it was time to graduate from meal kits when we found ourselves ordering the same “fancy” burger recipe for the 6th time. Quitting meal kits didn’t just mean coming up with recipes though. It also meant shopping for the ingredients, and planning out menus to make sure we were minimizing food waste and using things up.
When we discussed grocery shopping, I suggested it was something we could do together on a Saturday afternoon. Tristan quickly shot that down (which was his right, as the owner of the grocery card). We’ve been to the store together a few times before. He pointed out that it always takes twice as long, and we always forget items. We once debated types of salsa for 15 minutes, walking back and forth from the refrigerated section to the chips aisle as we compared a spicy tropical mango to salsa fresca. Clearly not efficient, and not exactly the quality time I’d envisioned when I suggested we shop together.
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The salsa experience may stem from the fact that Tristan and I have different philosophies on grocery shopping. I like to buy whatever catches my eye as I’m wandering the aisles. I can piece together lots of snacks and a few simple meals (pasta!) to alternate with regular Sweetgreen trips, and be set for the week. I’ll come home with a cart of pre-cut fruit, pretzels, hummus, a piece of salmon, and Annie’s mac and cheese. This would mean Tristan and I are eating separate dinners all week. I definitely eat to live, rather than the other way around, and wouldn’t call myself a foodie.
Tristan barely snacks, but has gotten really into cooking. He likes to research new recipes and follow each one to the last detail. Last week, he made a version of the turkey chili they serve at Deer Valley in Park City (my favorite!), and the accompanying cornbread required three different types of flour – none of which were the all-purpose we already had. For another meal, he bought the entire McCormick spice rack to make a fancy taco seasoning from scratch. He values having a creative, delicious dinner at the end of the day, and I’m just the lucky beneficiary.
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If it were up to me, we would have bought the cornbread mix or the taco seasoning packet to save time. For Tristan, there’s something almost meditative about cooking, and because he cares so much, grocery shopping was a natural fit for his chore list rather than mine. This to me is the beauty of Rodsky’s card idea: you’re more likely to take full ownership of something you care about. It was initially hard for me to let go – what if he forgot my yogurt, or didn’t see that strawberries were on sale? But once we decided it would be his task and agreed I wouldn’t “backseat shop”, he took over the whole thing, including planning a list ahead and consulting me to get any special requests.
Three months in, and the grocery card has stayed in Tristan’s deck. We live a block from the grocery store, and it offers online ordering for pickup, which has been a game changer for us. On Saturday afternoons, Tristan will spend some time thinking about meals and selecting recipes, I’ll let him know what snacks I need (Chobani yogurt cups, always), and he’ll place the order to pick up later that day. On Saturday nights, we usually end up having friends over for dinner, or eating at home just the two of us, and I’m so grateful to have a fully stocked fridge with a new gallon of milk at the ready for a post-dinner cappuccino.