The 5% rule my wife set that fixed our grocery chaos

I used to think bulk buying was winning, but after a $340 Costco run last month I saw half of it go bad in the fridge. She made us stick to a 5% splurge limit per trip, and now we actually eat what we buy. Has anyone else found that tighter limits beat bigger hauls?

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riverhill16d ago

Honestly that 5% rule sounds way better than what we did. My partner and I tried the opposite, we set a strict list and no extras at all, then we just rebelled and started grabbing random stuff anyway. The real fix for us was making one person in charge of the cart, but only for the trip, then we swapped next time. That way we both got a say but nobody was doing the "well I might want this later" thing. We also stopped buying anything that wasn't already planned into a specific meal for that week, so no more orphan jars of sauce sitting in the back. It's still not perfect but we cut our waste by like half, and the splurge thing sounds like a good middle ground too.