His shopping spree’s are usually in bursts, for weeks he will buy up on one particular type of thing. Cooking utensils. Food items. Plastic Containers. Hardware (OMG HARDWARE!!!! avoid Bunnings at ALL costs)

To the point that we can wind up with 15 can’s of Soup or Baked Beans or 40 cooking utensils spilling out of the kitchen drawers (it never fits in one)

We have more than we could EVER use…then I have to blacklist items for a while and let natural attrition do its job. Kids would be loading the dishwasher and *SMASH* I DON’T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT IT IF IT ISN’T MY PYREX! and so slowly our cupboards would tame again…..

He also binge eats and stockpiles all the WRONG sorts of foods chips dips biscuits bacon you get the drift….entire meals at midnight and of course if I am awake he will share……he is death for my figure 30kg since I met him in 2006 and I don’t eat alot of what he tries to give me.he has bipolar and ptsd and alot of this behaviour is driven by these disorders in union.

One of the GREATEST recent finds I have made is Online grocery shopping. he has a disgusting habit of adding things to my trolley and leaving me to pay for it and it ticks me off SOMETHING SHOCKING….ok fine have your bad habits but don’t foot me with the bill….anyway on this point we have found peace in the form of Coles online.

I had looked into these services a couple of years back and found their delivery fee’s exorbitant and the offering limited.

Woolworths is still overpriced and not very flexible for delivery but recently I took another look as my health took a turn for the worst and the hiking through the store and then the butcher the baker and everywhere else was getting to be too much with limited time between appointments and other commitments.

I still can’t get the bakery items I want or some of their specials either due to stock levels or it not being included online. but it is working particularly well to keep the chocolate chips and crap OUT of my pantry. all the hundreds of dollars of impulse buys don’t go in the trolley and there are not 20 tin’s of tomato soup weighing down my pantry shelves anymore. and my cupboards haven’t overflowed with well the plastics are still subsiding (damned tupperware never breaks) but UTENSILS have…..and my pantry fridges and freezers have a far wider variety of contents all at good levels for what we need and I can easily see in my lists when our preferred items are on special to always grab them at the cheapest price. we have been using it for a couple of months now with a delivery every week and it is positively DREAMY they literally put it all on my table for us to check off and put away! it couldn’t be easier and it has done everything I need it to

• It has curbed his impulse spending by reducing his opportunity
• It has removed the JUNK from my home
• It has almost stabilised my grocery budget even in the face of his manic spending….he only went above $300 in any given week ONCE, which in the past he would do regularly when manic if not more.
  Admittedly
• We no longer pick up $0.80 bags of Donuts and other reduced items…but we aren’t picking up bags of donuts and other reduced items.
• We are buying what we need.
• We are eating SO MUCH better and he has actually been motivated by the quality and range of fresh produce we have been getting and has been baking up a storm with the freezer positively LOADED with precooked homemade meals so much healthier than those oven baked boxes we used to resort to on those days when our health just was not up to it.

You REALLY want to see the quality of the fresh produce you get from online ordering compared to what you get on offer in store. and because it is of such a quality IT LASTS!

Oh and the greatest Genius of it all, I don’t have to wonder if we need it or not, while putting together the order a few days before actually placing it I do a survey of everyone in the house for what they are running low on and we check the cupboards for how much we have of which….no more being buried and the money is spent on what we need, no more forgotten items…

And the bonus freebies bag they occasionally send (you don’t get one every week) really are a lovely treat

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Some have complained that it reads like an Ad for coles. it isn’t and I don’t care if you think it is. Coles treats me as a person their delivery fee’s and structure are as flexible or rigid as I need. If I can be home all afternoon I can choose a 6 hour delivery window and pay less for delivery and have it delivered when it is most suitable for their driver OR I can pay $11 for a 2 hour delivery window if I can’t be flexible with my time, which is fair enough I love that Coles is willing to have room for some negotiation to suit circumstances and if I want it delivered for free I need to aim for a Wednesday delivery.

That is not to say they are perfect either. The first month involved ALOT of teething, because they were substituting items with entirely inappropriate products for our situation (but they weren’t to know) and then they were substituting items which were marked not to substitute. but they were ridiculously generous with refunds credits and vouchers during that teething period. I mean ridiculously generous….and they let us keep the items….even though they were useless for us. I gave some of them away, in the end they removed Substitutions from our account entirely. nothing ever gets substituted for us and we actually found due to this there are far fewer out of stock items than there were before that was done. I have a feeling they may be giving our order preference because they can’t substitute items on it.